The Hastings Trawler - 8 (October 2006)

EDITORIAL

‘Most people are bothered by those pages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand’ — Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Flannel Panel Publisher Graham Frost Editor-in-Chief Francisco Ferrer i Guardia Production Editor Brian Frost Illustrators Sam Barnes, Lesley Prince, Robert Sample, Richard Warren Photographer Graham Frost Contributors Julie Christie, Margaret Busby, M.A.D., Stephen Dorril, Ellen Eyewater, Graham Frost, Kate Lingard, Joy Melville, Pauline Melville, Jonathan Mendenhall, Ted Newcomen, Steve Peake, Donovan Pedelty

This issue we re-visit the Sion Jenkins affair. You may wonder how he ever got appointed to William Parker School. A clue lies in the letter I received in 1987, and which is included in this issue. (page 16), Remember this is a professional reply to a well-qualified teacher who had been through the interview process, had met all the academic criteria, and yet had been rejected because of a ‘gut-feeling’. Was that why Jenkins references were never checked and verified? Was the gut-feeling about him positive because he espoused the proper Christian values? Did a copy of this letter go to the appointing authority? It gives an insight into the culture of the school when the whim of the Head is more important that of references, experience, honesty and openness. Parents at that time were worried about the bullying and intimidation at William Parker, and the members of the education authority met with parents to try and resolve these issues.The Head did not attend these meetings. Sion Jenkins was not a chance appointment; the school, the governors and the ESCC all had a role in the tragedy which led to the death of Billie-Jo. Graham Frost, Publisher

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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: ‘E'en now, e'en now, on yonder Western Shores Weeps pale Despair, and writhing Anguish roars; E'en now in Afric's groves with hideous yell Fierce Slavery stalks, and slips the dogs of hell.

Conscience must listen to the voice of Guilt: Hear him, ye Senates! Hear this truth sublime, "He who allows oppression, shares the crime." : — Erasmus Darwin, "The Loves of the Plants", 1789.’

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

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

IN THIS ISSUE October 2006, Vol II, Issue 8 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 far beyond. 2 LETTER FROM AMERICA: Our own one-man Greek Chorus, Ted Newcomen, returns with a new, regular, column with which to scourge the mighty and haughty of two continents 3 MURDER MOST FOUL!: Jonathan Mendenhall considers the acquittal of Hastings teacher Sion Jenkins for the murder of his foster-daughter, Billie-Jo, and asks: ‘has justice been seen to be done?’

4-9 HASTINGS’ PIER: Steve Peake looks at the past and present of one of Hastings most iconic landmarks 10-13 TUBERCULOSIS IN HASTINGS: Graham Frost considers an early attempt to solve some of the health problems associated with poor housing 14-16 PEOPLE: The Zanzibar Hotel on Saint Leonards’ seafront is acquiring an international reputation. Kate Lingard finds out what makes its owner, Max O’Rourke, tick 17-18 DREDGING: New Trawler columnist Ellen Eyewater’s pithy observations on her rich social life as she pads around town 19 PROFILE: Local singer-songwriter Claire Hamill is a diva with a global reputation.

Joy Melville talks to Claire about her career and the future 20-22 REFLECTIONS I: If you think what happened to Adela Quested in the Marabar Caves was mysterious, wait until you read about Margaret Busby’s experiences in Hastings’ Caves 23-24 REFLECTIONS II: Actress Julie Christie looks back on her Sussex childhood 25 TABLE TALK: M.A.D., our mystery gastronome, continues her critical tour of local eateries and drinkeries 26 FICTION: ‘The Wedding’

by Pauline Melville.

28-30

BOOK Reviews:

30-32

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

32 1

FORUM

THE

TRAWLER THE TALK OF THE OLD (AND NEW) TOWN Wind farms

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

T

wenty first century wind-power or twentieth century nuclear power, how the power is generated is of small importance if the delivery system is nineteenth century, which most of our country’s infrastructure is.

Of course, pedants will know that town electricity only began in the late 1930s, and the big debate before that had been whether or not alternating or direct current should be used to distribute power to people’s homes and to industrial users. A.C. won — except for the South’s railways, which still use D.C — and local companies, often run as municipal enterprises, began generating power from coal or oil, and sending it down the power lines to where it was needed. Over the years these lines were upgraded as demand for power increased, and as long as only lighting and small electrical appliances were available it was sufficient. The average home now consumes power at a vastly increased rate, as do businesses. Because so many appliances relay on an uninterrupted energy supply, power failures are more common and more disruptive. Two months ago, in London, a power failure caused the underground to close some of its lines and forced retail shops to cease trading. In Canterbury, in August, at lunch time, a short power failure shut down the already struggling high street shops and restaurants costing them hundreds of pounds in lost business. Hastings has suffered several power failures recently, and we expect 2

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

more as electric storage heaters and electric fires are switched on in our increasingly chilly climate. Maybe the council should relax the planning laws so we can all put a wind turbine on our roofs!  G.F. Court circular

MORE SILLINESS

T

he court was hushed, the guilty plea was accepted, and after spending some four or five weeks on remand the prisoner’s case was heard.

The reason they had been on remand was because the plea had been ‘not guilty’ to allegations of driving while disqualified and dangerous driving.

The Crown Prosecutor read out the record of the prisoner’s previous offences. — eleven previous convictions for driving while disqualified, and a conviction for dangerous driving. Any reasonable person listening to the case from the public gallery might have wondered how this person could have the money to drive a brand new car at 50mph through red traffic lights along busy roads where children were, thankfully, waiting to cross rather than actually crossing. So, where did the car and its finance come from? The mobility people of course. The prisoner suffered from a mental illness which qualified them for the mobility scheme, and in spite of the previous convictions, which would all be on their licence, they were still able to get that car under the mobility allowance scheme. I wonder if they had a disabled blue badge as well.  G.F.

Annals of medicine

PHARMACOLOGY

I

n Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil is also call Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin. Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp. has announced that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of ‘cocktails’, ‘highballs’ and just a good oldfashioned ‘stiff drink’. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of Mount & Do.  T.N.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large, elderly, population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.  T.N.

LETTER FROM AMERICA

The Chesapeake Diaries

by Ted Newcomen

J

ust when Hastings Borough Council, Sussex Police, Waste-oSpace (yes, you know who I mean), and other pillars of the local establishment thought they had got rid of me forever with my departure for the good-old U.S. of A., then here I am again, turning up like a bad penny and still writing for The Trawler.

Life on this side of the big pond is certainly different and I hope to keep readers up to date on what’s happening in this great country — compare and contrast as my old English teacher would have said.

I say ‘great country’ because it is great in every sence of the word — it’s huge in size, has a massive population, has every type of geography and climate in the world, and is incredibly wealthy and powerful — making the UK look like some poor Third World nation. That’s not to say it hasn’t got its fair share of problems, and exhibits some of the worst character traits which I despise in bucket-loads.

But for all that it is the one-andonly nation in the world which can affect all the others by its economic, cultural, and military clout — and as such, it behoves us all to watch it carefully, and try to have some influence, it if at all possible.

Something Tony Blair understands very well, but has failed miserably to achieve during his tenure as prime minister — but that, as they say is another story for another time.

Meanwhile, what has happened during my first three weeks living in a house hidden in seventy acres of wooded, rural, Maryland? Well, firstly, the price of gas (sorry, I mean petrol) has dropped from $2.89 a gallon to only $2.15 a gallon. That’s down 74 cents (or about 39p a gallon) — that’s a US gallon remember, which is different from a British gallon. I’ll leave you to work out how much petrol costs in the USA and let you

weep alone. The result is when you go looking to buy a car in the U.S. (like we did last week) the last thing that a motor dealer is going to tell you is how fuel efficient any vehicle is; it’s simply not in the equation!

Secondly, the USA is definitely a Christian country. Britain may be the secular capital of Europe, with fewer people regularly attending church and believing in the Lord Almighty — Tony Blair and the establishment aside, but America believes in God, and religion lies at the core of much that influences political debate, something that the UK media chooses to ignore as it covers the United States superficially with its total obsession with the cult of ‘celebrity’.

Last week we were in a tiny podunck town in Delaware (named after the same de la Warr family of Bexhill-onSea fame), blink and you would have missed it — two shops, a filling station, and a couple of dozen of shiplap-covered timber-frame homes.

But one of the two shops sold ‘Christian supplies’ — what were they I wondered — two pieces of 6 by 4, a hammer, and a bag of long nails perhaps? A joke I can tell for The Trawler, but it might not go down so well with some of my current neighbours.

Televison in the USA is unbelieveable. Too much choice is definitely a bad thing, especially when most of it is crap. What I like best are the adverts, particulary those for pharmacological products. After all, this is a medicated society — if there was a pill to cure ugliness or stupidity they would develop and sell it first in the US. Watching the box at about 6pm and you will be assaulted by numerous ads for ‘erectile dysfunction’. Christ knows what children make of all this, especially when the ads tell you: ‘if your erection lasts for more than four hours then call your doctor’.

On my reading list this week to get up to speed with the US was the latest expose by Greg Palast Armed Madhouse published by Dutton (part of the Penguin Group). If you ever

wondered why we invaded Iraq (to keep the oil in the ground), why Saddam had to go (he was jerking the world price of oil around too much — the market must have stability), how George W. Bush cheated and won two elections (and the Republicans will do it again in 2008), how the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Mores’ are screwing the likes of you and me into the ground, and the myth of ‘peak oil’ (it’s the price that really matters), then read this book.

Particularly revealing is a secret memo to the PM in Downing Street which says ‘The people of England have been led in Iraq into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a stealthy witholding of information. The Baghdad comuniqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our record, and may soon may be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are, today, not far from a disaster’. Written in 1919 by T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) to the then Prime Minister — they say the apple doesn’t fall far.

A year later the RAF gassed the Kurds and initiated what was history’s first-ever mass aerial assault — Killing 9,000 Iraqis with nine tons of bombs, a kill-to-munitions ration not matched until ‘Desert Storm’ in 1991 when the US and Brits high-level carpet bombed lines of retreating Iraqis and other refugees.

The same year Winston Churchill ‘invented’ the nation of Iraq in a deal with the French. Soon after he revealed ‘I am strongly in favour of using poisioned gas against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror... against recaltricent Arabs as an experiment’.

No change there either!

But don’t despair, it’s not all bad news — the one quote I liked best from this book was by Prof. Michael Zweig, Director of the State University of New York’s Centre for the Study of Working Class Life — ‘Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon.  T.N. October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

3

THE MURDER OF BILLIE-JO JENKINS

‘Justice’ for Sion Jenkins’?

Justice for Billie-Jo!

Sam Barnes, ‘’...Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight!...’ Macbeth, II. i. 33)

by Jonathan Mendenhall

‘...Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a fearful fiend Doth close behind him tread.’’

The Ancient Mariner, S. T. Coleridge

4

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

‘JUSTICE’ FOR SION JENKINS? — JUSTICE FOR BILLIE-JO!

THE PACKED COURTROOM WAS SILENT. FACES FOCUSED ON THE LARGE VIDEO SCREEN ERECTED ON THE BENCH NEXT TO

MR JUSTICE SIR WILLIAM GAGE. THE CAMERA SNAKED THROUGH SOME OPEN PATIO DOORS, AROUND THE SIDE OF THE HOUSE, GLANCING UP THE GARDEN, BEFORE SETTLING BACK TO THE PATIO.

AT

FIRST IT WAS THE SHOES AND THEN A PAIR OF

LEGGINGS

EVERYONE THEMSELVES;

IN

CAME THE

WE

COMING NEXT.

KNEW

SLOWLY,

VIEW.

INTO

COURT

BRACED

WHAT

WAS

A NEAT, FULLY-

CLAD, LIFELESS FIGURE APPEARED

— AND

THEN A BROKEN HEAD IN A POOL OF BLOOD.

A

JUROR SOBBED.

JENKINS

STARED AHEAD, MOTIONLESS.

I

t was the first trial of Sion Jenkins, accused of murdering his foster daughter, Billie-Jo, in Hastings. I had sat through two days of pre-trial hearings before the seven-week case began in 1997, and I was later to monitor the subsequent defence appeals to the Law Lords and sit through much of the two re-trials.

Before his arrest, Jenkins, whom I came to regard as an arrogant poppinjay, had already taken part in a press conference appeal for witnesses.

Sitting next to his wife, who could not bring herself to look at him, Sion Jenkins spoke of intruders and noises at night in carefully-controlled and obviously-rehearsed tones.

There was something just not right.

In my opinion, these red-herrings were artfully designed to divert any

M

focus from himself as the police began their search for evidence. Yet, putting a possible suspect before the press is part of the game. It allows a potential witness the confidence to give a public and unchallenged version of events; that first version becomes a matter of record, which cannot later be denied.

Although I instinctively disliked Jenkins from the start, I bore no view as to his culpability. It was peculiar, however, that a man who allegedly came home to find his foster daughter lying in a pool of blood — someone in his care he presumably loved — could speak so coldly, reading from a prepared script.

While his wife looked crushed and devastated, Sion Jenkins, to use a journalist's vernacular, showed no emotion.

He may not have been the sort of person to display his feelings publicly, but, in my view, it was significant that he did not utter one kind word for his foster daughter. He paid her no tribute spoke her name once during that press conference, describing her as ‘difficult’.

But speaking her name even that once during the press conference, was once more that he did in the dock.

When Jenkins took the witness stand during his initial trial I watched from the press box, a few feet away. His carefully-controlled persona broke occasionally under cross-examination when a streak of temper surfaced.

During two and a half hours he never

UCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN, reported and debated in the case of Sion Jenkins and the murder of his foster daughter, Billie-Jo. A great deal of circumstantial and forensic evidence was tested during three lengthy trials as Sion Jenkins stood accused of battering the teenager to death in a fit of rage.

He was formally acquitted at the Old Bailey in February after a hung jury could not reach a majority verdict following his second retrial.

A campaigning group ‘Justice for Sion Jenkins’ mounted a relentless crusade, alleging from the start he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. In spite of his final acquittal, they continue to do so.

They still maintain the jury should have found him not guilty and blame Sussex police for bringing a case based, they allege, largely on innuendo.

They are vitriolic and personally abusive about any

once referred to Billie-Jo by name. He constantly spoke of her ‘wilfulness’ and the discipline routines he was forced to devise to keep her in check.

Whatever crucial views were forming in those crucial early days, there was one matter which caused incredulity among the press. This was the issue of bail for Jenkins?

Bail is occasionally granted on a murder charge, but you must be a ‘respectable person’ and have money — a lot of it. Even so, blatant pricefixing for his freedom from jail was sewn up between the defence and the judge in a matter of minutes.

We sat agog, while the clerk announced he was awaiting a fax from Scotland guaranteeing a quarter of a million pounds bail to release Jenkins from jail, pending his trial. We later discovered his father worked for Scottish-based ‘Kwik Fit Tyres’ and its millionaire founder, Sir Tom Farmer.

It is reasonable to assume the money came from that source.

There are those who believe his family had Masonic connections and this facilitated his bail. Masonic conspiracy is often rumoured, but whether it was an influence in the Jenkins’ case remains speculation.

Even so, the reasons for refusing bail are bound by statute: 1) The accused might interfere with witnesses 2) For the safety of the accused 3) Because of the seriousness of the offence.

witness or journalist who does not share their view, and yet they themselves choose to remain anonymous.

The inability of the jury to deliver a final not-guilty verdict is uncomfortable for them. They know the cloud of suspicion will always now hang over their man. They have ultimately failed.

As a reporter who sat through much of the evidence, I have a different perspective to those who distort, ignore and select information in a well-orchestrated campaign. I cannot rehash the days, weeks and years of evidence or the legal arguments and counter-claims. This article cannot reproduce the trials and it is not a re-examination of the case. The editor has invited me to give my personal take on a sensational story.

I do, however, express my views in the unwavering belief that on the day Sion Jenkins was convicted of murdering his foster daughter back in 1997, Billie-Jo got justice.  J.M. October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

5

‘JUSTICE’ FOR SION JENKINS? — JUSTICE FOR BILLIE-JO!

I have been in court when a drunk was refused bail for peeing in a furniture store and a woman for spitting at pensioners.

By granting bail the court left their action dangerously open to an interpretation of bias towards his innocence — even before any trial had started. It also implied something about middle-class status. Dustmen do not get bail for murder. They could not afford it anyway. A respected deputy head who, incidentally, should never have been arrested by the wicked police in the first place, is entitled to a helping hand. Enter the 'Justice for Sion Jenkins' Campaign.

In 1998, a self-pitying letter by Jenkins from his prison cell was printed in the Hastings’ Observer, thanking those who supported him. In it Jenkins lamented the slamming of cell doors and his monotonous daily routine in the prison yard. Once again there was no mention of Billie-Jo or any heartfelt appeal from an ‘innocent’ man to find the real culprit who murdered his lovely foster daughter.

It was about this time that the ‘Justice for Sion Jenkins’ group was formed. From the start they embarked on a morally questionable campaign involving the character assassination of possibly hostile witnesses who had once been friends to Jenkins, his wife and individual police officers. It is significant that they have never actually declared a belief in Jenkins’ innocence, but they continue to rail against the police — and consistently avoid the small matter of justice for Billie-Jo. The jury’s inability to clear Jenkins of murder must rankle with these people. It must be difficult to keep face when, having been so selfrighteous, the verdict did not go their way. So they continue even today when, realistically, it is over.

It is probable the ‘Justice for Sion Jenkins’ group include a smattering of fellow church-goers, hoodwinked by a man who carefully engineered an image, crafted to ingratiate himself with Roger Mitchell, his ‘fellow 6

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

Christian’ headmaster of William Parker School. Jenkins had wiled his way into the bosom of church and school-governors. The ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ candidate would inevitably inherit the headmastership while his manoeuvring and fraudulent qualifications went unchecked. (Ed.: see R. Mitchell’ s letter on page 16.)

There was a similar unquestioning support for Sheila Bower from Rye, accused of pushing her aunt into a river, and later to be acquitted. Again, campaigning and support groups. She could not possibly have done it. She was, after all, a church-goer and a pillar of the local community.

I remember Mrs Bower turning up to watch the Jenkins’ trial at Lewes Crown Court. She was taking notes from the public gallery, which is against court rules, and was told to stop. Journalists were wondering why she was even bothering. But then, Jenkins was a schoolteacher.

Of course, a campaign has every right to champion a cause. ‘Justice for Sion Jenkins’ was highly-skilled at mobilising metropolitan journalists and broadcasters, churning out ‘access’ programmes such as Rough Justice on the basis of highly-paid ‘expert’ witnesses and acres of uncritical print, producing new ‘red-herring’ theories and allegations of flawed evidence.

Jenkins’ supporters are still churning out misinformation which continues to appear unchecked and unchallenged in the media.

Constantly and deliberately they seek to muddy the waters by pointing the finger at Sussex police.

They allude to Lord Phillips’ report, which highlighted mainly structural and administrative failures in the Sussex force. The report details no criticism of Detective Superintendent Jeremy Paine or D.S. Ann Capon, or the evidence-gathering team that brought Jenkins to the dock. Yet the ‘Justice for Sion Jenkins’ movement continues to con the public by innuendo, implying police corruption and failures. Conveniently, they forget that prosecutions are not brought by

the police, but by the independent Crown Prosecution Service which sifts evidence before proceeding.

Sussex police, like all forces, foul up, but remain accountable. They bungled the Jimmy Ashley shooting in St Leonards. There are issues over their handling of the Jay Abatan case in Brighton and, since the 1970s, a small number of cases have gone to the Court of Appeal. These cases represent a fraction of the hundreds of prosecutions in the public interest which go unquestioned, and are successfully processed through the courts. Every force in the country shares a percentage of over-turns and retrials, thanks to the checks and balances of the legal system. The ‘Justice forJenkins’ campaigners imply that these minority failures, totally unrelated to the Jenkins’ case, mean that everything Sussex police touches must be flawed. So who will they contact when their bungalows are burgled?

Amid all this hue and cry, one of the most incredible actions of Jenkins’ defence team — revealing a degree of desperation — was their attack on appeal court judge, Mr Justice PenryDavy, whom they alleged was biased against Jenkins because he had oldboy connections with William Parker School. A rational mind might argue that the bias, if any, would have been in the opposite direction.

Attempts were made in the national press to vilify the character of his then wife, Lois Jenkins, who was accused of turning their natural children against their father, an accusation that was dismissed by the appeal court judges before Jenkins’ next trial. The judges also cast doubts on the case of the man with mental health problems who (in spite of no evidence and thorough examinations) is still being peddled out by Jenkins’desperate camp as the ‘likely killer’.

No doctor was produced in court to give evidence as to this ‘likely killer’s’ mental state or his alleged obsession with plastic. It was a ruse. Billie-Jo had been discovered with part of a plastic

‘JUSTICE’ FOR SION JENKINS? — JUSTICE FOR BILLIE-JO!

bin liner inserted in one of her nostrils, possibly an attack of panic and a fatuous attempt to stop bleeding once the killer had come out of his 'red mist' frenzy — or perhaps even an attempt to suffocate her to ensure she did not identify her murderer!

During the first appeal, the High Court Judges accepted this man had alibis, had been satisfactorily questioned by the police and undergone appropriate forensic tests.

Consider, too, how people with mental health problems or charities who support them, reacted to the suggestion that this man, by virtue of his mental frailty — and with absolutely no other evidence against him — was the ‘likely killer’.

The ‘likely killer’s’ accusers want it both ways. Mentally deranged. yet sane enough to select, correctly, one terraced house in a row of several hundred, stumble across a young teenage girl in a hidden back garden, smash her over the head, and then ‘sanely’ disappear back into the community. How did he know she was there? There was no access at the rear, and she could not have been spotted from the front of the house.

Billie-Jo was not sexually assaulted; nor was there any sign of a break-in, so what were the motives of a total stranger? How likely is it that it was someone unknown to Billie-Jo who took her life that February afternoon?

The circumstantial evidence against Jenkins was compelling. Changing his stories to the police, failure to carry out instructions from the emergency services, attempts to lose his bloodsplattered fleece, testimony against him from one-time friends, and new evidence from Billie-Jo’s school pals.

Then there is the history of violence against both Billie-Jo and his own wife. If all this, which was legally admissible, is to be disregarded, it does mean at least six witnesses for the prosecution conspired to invent and lie, perjuring themselves in court. No friend stood in the dock for Sion Jenkins.

Nevertheless, it was the science, the

arguments over the blood-spattering on his clothes that would concentrate the minds of — and finally split — the jury. After being unable to reach the required majority verdict, Jenkins was formally acquitted after three lengthy trials spanning nearly ten years. The legal system had groaned, but worked its way to a verdict. Never could a more thorough or fairer airing of a fascinating case have been heard.

This has always been, in my opinion, about a feisty young woman and her complex relationship with her foster father. Billie-Jo died a virgin.

But it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence presented by the Crown and parried by his defenders, that Jenkins moral and mental relationship with her was unhealthy and, inevitably, dangerous.

Jenkins’ legal team and his supporters have been looking at compensation and suing Sussex police.

A high-risk strategy in view of the ending of the ‘double jeopardy’ rule, especially when it’s a judge and the ‘balance of probabilities’ which determine matters in a civil case and not the deliberation of twelve jurors.

Predictably, Jenkins has attempted to exploit his status as a wronged man.

Appearing on day-time television and a squirming performance with Trevor Macdonald. After the programme his blood-daughters issued a statement denying the comments their own father had made.

Asked about the Jenkins case, the Crown Prosecution Service would not comment on specific cases, but their spokesperson did make the point that ‘the Court of Appeal can now quash any acquittal and order a retrial should ‘new and compelling’ evidence come to light.

Jenkins has written a book but has had problems finding a publisher willing to take it on. If it does get printed I might buy one. It will be shelved on my bookcase in the section marked ‘fiction’.  J.M.

Operation Cathedral: The investigation into the murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins FOLLOWING

COURT OF APPEAL’ 2004 TO SEND THE CASE FOR RE-TRIAL, A SMALL TEAM OF DETECTIVES WITHIN SUSSEX POLICE'S MAJOR CRIME BRANCH UNDERTOOK A THE

DECISION IN JULY

REINVESTIGATION OF ALL ASPECTS OF THE MURDER IN

1997 OF BILLIE-JO JENKINS.

THIS IS AN OUTLINE OF THAT EVIDENCE his reinvestigation was led by Detective Chief Inspector Steve Dennis, supported by Detective Inspector Phil Mays and a team of twelve officers based in the Major Incident Suite at Sussex Police CID Headquarters at Hollingbury, Brighton. The first re-trial of Sion Jenkins for the murder of BillieJo began on April 5 2005 at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London.

All the evidence from the original prosecution and subsequent appeals was reviewed. Following this review process the investigation team identified a number of new lines of enquiry. This resulted in 200 new actions being generated, bringing the total number of statements taken to around 700.

Sion Jenkins’ former wife Lois was reinterviewed and made a new statement, which resulted in her giving three days of evidence to the first re-trial via a video link. At the second re-trial Mrs Jenkins travelled from her home in Australia to give ‘live’ evidence direct to the judge and jury.

Mr B — the man alleged by the defence to be a suspect likely to be responsible for the murder — was also interviewed. This interview took place in the presence of his carers, as he still suffers from a severe mental illness.

Enquiries revealed evidence of alibi as well as forensic examination which eliminated him as a suspect.

A number of new witnesses were also interviewed, including school friends of Billie-Jo, teachers, education officials and residents living in properties behind the Jenkins’ former home in Lower Park Road.

A team of scientific experts was identified and a peer review system introduced. The team consisted of more than twenty experts — all of them expert in their various fields and originating

T

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

7

‘JUSTICE’ FOR SION JENKINS? — JUSTICE FOR BILLIE-JO!

from forensic science providers as well as academic establishments and leading hospitals. The work undertaken by this team looked at the original evidence from the first re-trial as well as undertaking groundbreaking experimental work in the new investigation.

The first re-trial concluded in July 2005 when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. For the second re-trial, Detective Chief Inspector Graham Pratt took over as Senior Investigating Officer from DCI Dennis, who retired from Sussex Police after 30 years of service.

The police investigative team was reduced to release officers back to normal duties while allowing the operation’s key officers to work towards the second retrial. This started on October 31. 2005, again at the Central Criminal Court.

The prosecution for both re-trials was assisted by the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allowed various elements to be included in the prosecution case that were inadmissible in 1998.

The new evidence under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was: 1 Sion Jenkins gave a number of different accounts of his actions and whereabouts on the day of the murder.

1 Sion Jenkins lied about his CV when applying for jobs at William Parker School, Hastings. This dishonesty was the subject of a separate charge at the time of the original trial, and was allowed to lie on the file following Jenkins’conviction for murder. For this reason it was never referred to at the first trial.

1 Sion Jenkins was under severe pressure during the weekend of Billie-Jo’s death. He had been verbally offered the headship of William Parker School but was anxious (‘pacing up and down in a frenzy’) because he still had not received formal written confirmation. He feared the lies on his CV were about to be exposed, as the former Chief Education Officer of East Sussex has confirmed that he would not have been offered the job if the truth had been known.

1 Sion Jenkins had been seen to kick Billie-Jo during a family holiday the previous summer. Billie-Jo could ruin his career if she exposed his violence.

2 Sion Jenkins had a ‘temper’, according to his former wife. He and Lois had had an argument concerning Billie-Jo on Valentine’s Day, the evening before the murder.

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At the second re-trial the Judge, His Honour Mr Justice David Clarke, allowed further evidence that had not been included in the first re-trial. This allowed the prosecution to call Laura Conway and Holly Prior, who were Billie-Jo’s best friends at the time of her murder, to give evidence.

Another new area for the second retrial concerned the location and use of telephones at Lower Park Road on the day of the murder.

Sion Jenkins said that, after discovering Billie-Jo, he used a phone in the hallway to call the emergency services. The prosecution argued that Mr Jenkins could have used a phone in the dining room to make the call. This phone could have been taken out to the patio, enabling Mr Jenkins to speak direct with the emergency operator at the same time as tending to Billie-Jo. Although this phone was next to the kitchen entrance, the cord was long enough for it to be moved in this way.

Mr Jenkins stated that he called the emergency services twice from the hallway phone, when he first found her and then again when he checked to make sure that he was ‘not imagining it’.

During the first conversation with the ambulance operator Mr Jenkins was told to put Billie-Jo into the recovery position and to open her airways by tilting back her head and lifting up her chin. He was also asked to check Billie-Jo’s pulse. Mr Jenkins called a neighbour to help him and, on her instruction, he phoned the emergency services again. He was again instructed to clear Billie-Jo's airway to assist breathing and told how to check for a pulse. He confirmed that for this conversation he again used the phone in the hallway. Mr Jenkins performed none of these actions.

During this period, Mr Jenkins says that he made several trips between BillieJo and his two daughters, who were in a room at the other end of the house. On each occasion he passed by the phone in the dining room.

The prosecution suggested that these were very strange actions for a father who had come home to find his foster daughter dead or dying on the patio, unless he had committed the attack and already knew what to expect.

In the first re-trial Sion Jenkins gave his evidence to the court over four days.

During cross examination by Mr Nicholas Hilliard, Senior Treasury Counsel, Mr Jenkins gave a version of

the events of February 15 1997 which gave some new areas of evidence that had not been disclosed before. This amounted to the fifth different account that Mr Jenkins had given to police and the court since 1997 about the day BillieJo was murdered.

At the second re-trial he again gave evidence over a four-day period. During cross examination he again maintained his innocence, and continued to stand by the explanations and accounts he had previously given in police interviews and previous court testimony.

Overview of Forensic Evidence This section provides an overview of some of the key forensic areas, as follows: 1. Injuries 2. Pathology 3. The weapon 4. The murder scene 5. Clothing 6. White inclusions 1. Injuries Billie-Jo Jenkins died as a result of being severely beaten around the head with a heavy metal tent peg. It is impossible to say exactly how many blows were struck, but the appearance of the injuries would suggest that they were caused by multiple blows to the head, landing in or around the same area. This resulted in Billie-Jo dying from severe head injuries.

It is not possible to estimate with any degree of accuracy the period of time from the infliction of the head injuries to death. It could have ranged from the virtually instantaneous up to several minutes. However, Billie-Jo would have been rendered unconscious at an early stage of the attack.

2. Pathology Examination of the lungs at the post mortem examination showed them to be pink and hyper-inflated. The airways also contained some blood which had been inhaled and passed down into the lower airways.

Hyper inflated lungs The lungs could have been hyperinflated as a result of air being retained in the lungs because of an upper airway blockage. The prosecution, however, argued that an incomplete small lower airway obstruction was a more likely explanation for the lungs to have been hyper-inflated.

Pulmonary Interstitial Emphysema

‘JUSTICE’ FOR SION JENKINS? — JUSTICE FOR BILLIE-JO!

(PIE) Pulmonary Interstitial Emphysema is caused as a result of the air in the lungs being under a high pressure, causing the air to be forced into the surrounding tissues supporting the structure of the lungs — the interstitial tissue. Air leaking into the interstitial tissue of the lung is a process known as interstitial emphysema.

The defence’s proposition is that histology of the lung tissue taken at the original post mortem showed gas-filled spaces in the lining of the lung. These were almost circular in section, implying that it was inflated by positive pressure.

This, according to the defence, in unequivocal evidence of interstitial emphysema.

The interstitial emphysema, if present, could mean that the lungs would have been under high pressure at some point in time.

The prosecution however, states there may well have been a degree of PIE present, but that this has little or no bearing on the case and would hold little, if any, consequence.

The prosecution proposition is that the blood-spatter on Sion Jenkins and BillieJo was as a result of the attack.

The defence proposition is that the movement of the shoulder when Sion Jenkins tended to Billie-Jo produced an explosive release of high pressure air from Billie-Jo’s lungs, through the nasal valve or through the mouth, which could have generated a blood aerosol.

The prosecution case is that, for this to happen, a series of individually unlikely events would need to take place at the same time.

The prosecution stated that this would be highly unlikely. Additionally, the evidence of Mr Adrian Wain of the Forensic Science Service was that the blood found on Sion Jenkins was what he would expect to have found if Sion Jenkins was the attacker of Billie-Jo. 3. The Weapon The weapon used to inflict the fatal injuries on Billie-Jo Jenkins was a heavy metal tent peg. This tent peg was found close to her body. It was about 18 inches (45.5cm) long, three-fifths of an inch (1.5cm) in diameter and 1lb 11oz in weight (763 grammes). It was pointed (conical shaped) at one end and hooked at the other. The peg had originally been painted green, but this coating was very rough and damaged.

The tent peg appeared slightly bent. It

was heavily bloodstained towards the pointed end and the staining extended for some one-third of its length. It was mostly heavy-contact staining. DNA profiling of this blood matched the DNA profile of Billie-Jo. There was some spattered-type staining and along with this blood spatter was what appeared to be some spattered paint staining. Adhering to the staining was a quantity of brown hair, consistent with being from Billie-Jo. 4. The Murder Scene The scene of the murder was the back patio of the former family home in Lower Park Road, Hastings.

There was no indication that Billie-Jo had moved significantly while lying on the floor and being struck.

The uninterrupted nature of the blood spatter ‘forward’ of Billie Jo’s body (i.e. towards the house) means that her assailant stood next to or astride the body, facing the house, during the attack.

5. Clothing Billie-Jo Jenkins The leggings worn by Billie-Jo Jenkins had many tiny spots (hundreds) mainly on the front of both legs extending to the outer aspect of the back of the right leg and the inner aspect of the back of the left leg.

There were also some smears of blood or contact stains on the right knee area, the upper left thigh area and the upper right back.

The jumper was very heavily soaked in blood. However, there appeared to be some tiny spots, similar to those described on the leggings, on those areas free from heavy, soaked staining.

Sion Jenkins There were areas of tiny spots of blood on the lower parts of the sleeves and the chest area of the fleece. There were approximately forty-eight tiny spots of blood on the upper mid-chest, twentyone on the left sleeve and three on the right sleeve.

The majority of these blood spots were the size of a pin-prick.

DNA profiling of these blood spots showed it to match the DNA profile of Billie-Jo Jenkins.

There were approximately 70 tiny spots of blood on the lower right leg of the trousers with four spots higher up this leg and two on the front of the left leg just above the knee area.

The conclusions at the early stage of

this case were, and still are, that the spots of blood on Sion Jenkins’ trousers and jacket were typical of those that would be expected to be found following an impact onto a surface wet with blood.

The size of the spots also indicated that the force of the impact was considerable and that the wearer was close to it. The overall distribution of spattered blood was consistent with what would be expected to be found on the clothing of Billie-Jo’s attacker.

6. White inclusions The leggings from Billie-Jo and the trousers from Sion Jenkins were reexamined in 2004. During that examination four spots of white material encapsulated in the blood were found on the outside front of Billie-Jo’s leggings, and three spots of similar material were found on the right leg of Sion’s trousers.

These white inclusions appear to have arisen as airborne spots consisting of a mixture of blood and white material.

The defence suggested that the white inclusions in fact come from Billie-Jo’s nose, injured when a black plastic bag was inserted into her left nostril. They speculated that the inclusions could travel back inside the nose then travel to the open right nostril where they were exhaled with the blood as the pressure was released.

They also suggested the white inclusions could in fact travel down the front of the face with blood, then either be inhaled or find their way into BillieJo’s mouth. The inclusions were then exhaled with blood as the air was released from the lungs.

The prosecution case was that the white material was identified as tissue. In the context of such particles forming part of the blood spatter pattern, this is strong evidence that these particles were deposited as part of the spatter itself and consistent with scalp tissue from Billie-Jo that has been forcibly impacted.

Given all the findings in this case, the findings of spatter and pieces of flesh on both Billie-Jo and Sion Jenkins are more likely if this entire spatter arose during the same action i.e. the beating of BillieJo with the weapon.  January 2000 R.I.P. As we go to press we learn of the death, in August, of Bill Jenkins, Billie-Jo’s natural father

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

9

HASTINGS’ PIER

The end of the pier show?

by Steve Peake

H

astings Pier faces a bleak future. Unless something dramatic happens, the town’s pier is likely to suffer the same fate as the much-loved (but now ruined) Brighton West Pier.

The 134-year old Hastings Pier cannot come back into full use again until someone pays for a survey of its structure, and then finances the specified repairs. Council officers have said the survey would cost about £200,000 and the repairs would be at least £3 million (and in 1999 the borough planner said he thought it would be upwards of £6 million).

These many millions of pounds would have to be spent on the below-deck structure of the pier, not the buildings on top that try to generate an income. Who would be prepared to commit themselves to investing a huge, unknown, amount when it would add very little, if anything, to the existing sources of income?

The company that owns the pier, Ravenclaw Investments, has failed to commission the survey, and shows no signs that it is going to do so. Cynics would not be at all surprised if this offshore company were to shortly disappear over the horizon, on voyage to its native Panama, leaving the pier effectively ownerless, and sinking. One could draw a parallel with Hastings Harbour, which was built in the late 1890s by a one-off company that went into liquidation halfway through the construction, leaving the harbour to fall apart until Hastings Council took it over several decades later.

Could Hastings Council become owner of the pier? A prominent Conservative councillor, Peter Finch, was asked if the council would assume ownership in some way (CPO etc). He replied in a loud and forthright voice: ‘Over my dead body!’ Other Conservative councillors have since indicated that the council may pay for the survey, but no more than that. And one cannot blame them, for how could they justify to ratepayers spending millions of pounds on such an uncertain return?

So, if Ravenclaw disappears and the council does not take it on, what are the other options? The only possibility seems to be for the public to set up a fundraising trust, and try to extract grants from various places. But that is just what happened with Brighton West Pier, and the forces of nature (plus vandalism) beat them to the post. Or maybe Hastings Council could claim back some of the many millions of pounds that have been wasted by SeaSpace on schemes that still show no signs of materialising — the Pelham Place car park redevelopment, the Stade’s new tourist centre, building something on the old bathing pool site, revamping Bottle Alley, etc.

It would be a major tragedy for the town if the pier was just abandoned and left to fall down over the coming years. At the very least Hastings Council or some other organisation should organise a public meeting where all these issues could be fully discussed and to see if, somehow or other, the people of Hastings and St Leonards could together find another way of saving the pier. 

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I

f you stand on Hastings Pier, you will see nothing of the original Victorian ‘peerless pier’. Only the below-deck iron posts and gantry date back to 1872, but they are now starting to collapse.

The first seeds of the pier were sown in late 1860, when a group of local speculators, including several councillors, set up the Hastings Floating Harbour Association. This initially aimed to build a small harbour, of a single floating arm, chained to the seabed, off the Old Town. But in 1861 this proposal turned into a much bigger plan: a two-arm, 57-acre harbour in front of the Old Town, including using the harbour arms as public ‘promenade piers’, as was just becoming fashionable. At the same time, another company came onto the scene from out of town with similar plans for a harbour and pier.

Until the construction of the railways throughout Britain in the 1840s, ‘50s and ‘60s, piers were primarily landing stages for boats bringing health-seeking visitors to the

HASTINGS’ PIER

seaside towns. But the railways brought many more middle-class pleasure-seekers to the seaside, who liked ‘promenading’ not only along seafronts, but also out on piers. From the late 1850s the new pleasure piers began appearing around the coast — simple structures carrying no buildings, but making an excellent promenade.

For most of the 1860s there was a bitter fight between the Hastings establishment and the non-local company over which would win the prize of building a pier (the harbour idea was soon dropped). The winner on points was to be the out-of-town Pier and Harbour Company, led by Britain’s most prolific and famous pier builder. Eugenius Birch. This doyen of pier engineers, born 1818, had been involved in railway and bridge works in his early life. His first pier was Margate, 1853-6, and by the time of his death in 1884 he had been engineer for another 13 piers, including Brighton West, Eastbourne and Hastings.

Despite a lack of support from Hastings Council, the company obtained the legal powers necessary to build a harbour and pier under the 1861 General Pier and Harbour Act, but the project never came to fruition because of the default of the contractor, plus steadily growing local opposition. Many local people believed a harbour would reduce the town’s growing character as a fashionable resort, plus councillors and traders wanted their scheme to make the profits, not a company run by people unconnected with the town.

Another problem for the Pier and Harbour Company was the requirement under the 1861 Act that the harbour be built before the pier, and all this required massive funding.

In 1865, Birch and his company produced a new proposal: to separate their two projects, with the pier being at White Rock and the harbour remaining at the Old Town. They also

drew up plans for a pier at Warrior Square, to be called the Alexandra Pier, but this was soon dropped.

The secretary of the Pier and Harbour Company was Mr W. H. Simpson, a solicitor who was involved in several other piers, including Brighton West, of which he said he was the sole promoter. He had lived in the Hastings area since 1839 and wanted to benefit the town. But by 1865 he was up against fierce opposition, and he said ‘there was a great hostility to the plan among some members of the council, because these gentlemen [councillors] wished to carry out a plan of their own’.

The most vociferous of these councillors was leading local builder John Howell. In 1866 Howell was given a £25,000 contract by his fellow councillors to build major drainage facilities across the town, and he had his eyes on a similar sum for a pier.

But he had no guarantee of laying his hands on that contract if the pier company was not controlled by his fellow local freemasons — and the Pier and Harbour Company was not.

In addition, the 1861 Act put serious legal constraints on any other scheme, including any backed by Hastings Council.

But the Hastings terms of the 1861 Act were due to expire in July 1867, so in December 1866, with the Pier and Harbour Company dormant, Simpson held a public meeting to promote his own new parliamentary bill. He was now proposing just a ‘pleasure pier’, without a harbour. He offered the setting up and running of the scheme to the people of the town, on condition he was employed as adviser. But Howell again condemned Simpson, talking of ‘promises made and broken’ by him in previous years.

Simpson warned that only the old company and Hastings Council could stop his Bill becoming an Act. In January 1867 Simpson asked a Hastings Council meeting to approve his new Birch-backed plan, with the pier being sited at White Rock. The

council did not do so, and instead supported an alternative project for a White Rock pier put forward by another newly-formed, local, company.

But this came to nothing, and as the council had not opposed Simpson, his bill became the 1867 Hastings Pier Act. This brought the battle of Hastings Pier to a standstill. Both sides were well dug-in, but neither had weapons to defeat the other. Simpson’s new Pier Company, backed by Birch and with national figures as directors, had legal preference over the pier site, yet had little local support, while Howell had lots of backing, but was legally barred from the site.

After two years’ stalemate and a tight money market, a compromise was reached in the summer of 1869, whereby Simpson agreed to hand over his company to Howell and friends, on condition they kept Birch as engineer and paid all the costs of creating the Act and the company.

Howell called a meeting of about forty leading business people in the Castle Hotel, Wellington Square, on May 28 1869, to discuss his proposed deal with the Pier Company.

Howell first explained the background to the meeting and then Birch outlined his design ideas. Birch said he had chosen the White Rock site because ‘the best foundation could be found there’ — no rocks, and a thick bed of clay. The working expenses of existing piers — eg, Blackpool, Scarborough and Brighton West — were met by income from refreshment stalls and toy shops on the piers. A large and handsome saloon would be built at the end of the pier, with entrance by an extra fee.

Birch thought investors could expect a dividend of eight- to ten-per cent.

In a general discussion, the meeting made it clear that there had previously been considerable hostility to the outof-town pier promoters.

The meeting then passed a resolution adopting the project and a local committee was appointed. On October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

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O

T

HASTINGS’ PIER

September 27 1869 the shareholders appointed a board of directors made up of local people: John Howell, William Scrivens, Mayor (as chairman), Thomas Brassey MP, George Clement and MC Gausden.

Thomas Hide was secretary.

In June 1869 tenders were invited, and these were submitted to a special meeting of shareholders.

Unfortunately for John Howell, the contract was awarded to Richard Laidlaw & Son, of Glasgow, one of the top three British firms specialising in piers. Birch had already employed them, including on Brighton West Pier.

The contract price was £23,250, and it was sealed on December 9 1869.

The first pile was driven at 3am, Saturday, December 18 1869.

Completion date for the contract was set as March 19 1871, but it was delayed for more than a year by many problems, and construction difficulties sparked a crisis of confidence in the spring of 1870. The company survived, but by July that year it had still not raised all the capital, selling only £14,480-worth of the £10 shares. The last of the shares was not taken up until February 1872.

The contractors discovered that there was a submerged ancient forest at the seaward end of the pier. In July 1871, as piles were screwed into the seabed for the pier head, one broke on hitting a large oak tree. Several smaller trees had already been taken up and many others were scattered about, reported the Hastings News. The massive two ton trunk, 24-feet long and three feet wide, was put on display in Alexandra Park. It is now believed that this was part of the forest that ran all along this part of the Sussex coast about four thousand years ago.

The design of Hastings Pier by the imaginative and highly competent Birch was seminal in some ways: it was the first to have a grand pavilion, 12

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and the first to have it included as an integral part of the design. Until then, pier entertainment had been limited to a band playing in a small bandstand exposed to wind and rain, but the new Hastings Pier showed concerts, musicals and plays could be performed in comfort — and profitably. Many other piers soon followed Hastings’ example.

The original pier was 910 feet long.

For about half its length it was 45 feet wide, forming the ‘promenade deck’.

This wooden deck was laid on wrought-iron diagonal girders attached to about 360 cast-iron columns. Each column had a screw blade at its bottom end and was literally screwed into the ground.

The pier at its shoreward end gradually widened out to 130 feet, with two separate ‘toll house’ entrances on the east and west sides.

At the seaward end, the last 300 feet of the pier widened out to 195 feet to accommodate the ornate pavilion built in oriental style, with onion domes and tall finials. The pavilion was capable of housing 2,000 people, and measured 150 feet long, 100 feet wide and 30 feet high. The pavilion (aka saloon, concert hall) was then the only building on the pier, apart from the two toll houses, which were also oriental in style, being tiny domed octagonal boxes.

Also at the seaward end were lowlevel landing stages on both sides, each 200 feet long and eight feet wide.

The pier was formally opened by the Earl of Granville, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, on August 6 1872, the first-ever statutory bank holiday.

The bank holidays were to bring many more working class people to the seaside, a new generation of trippers seeking fun not health, and escaping from the stifling confines of Victorian urban life.

On opening day, the South East Railway lay on a special train from London to Hastings, bringing the Earl and shareholders, plus other interested people. A procession

formed at the station, with the mayor, the two MPs, coastguards, rifle volunteers and fire brigade, led by the band of the Royal Marines Artillery.

First they went to the Queens’ Hotel to meet the directors and from there to the pier. But there was heavy rain and strong winds for much of the day.

Gun salutes were fired from the pierhead and by Thomas Brassey MP’s yacht Eothen, lying close by. The company then sat down to lunch in the pavilion at the pier-head, with 630 seats. At the lunch the Earl called the town’s new acquisition ‘a peerless pier — a pier without a peer’.

The pier was an immediate success, attracting 482,000 people in its first year, a much bigger number than expected. A major draw was the band playing every day.

But bad management of the pier also became an immediate cause for concern, a foretaste of what was to happen in recent years. Howell, sulking over his failure to win the contract, had been interrupting Laidlaw during their work, creating a bad feeling. The Pier Company then refused to pay Laidlaw £2,000 for extra work it carried out, whereupon Laidlaw took the company to court and won the case in an expensive lawsuit. Some shareholders saw Howell as the bad egg in all this. He was found to have been given a contract by his fellow directors to install toilets at ten times what shareholders thought was the right price. At the 1875 AGM, shareholders said they were being ‘treated by the directors like strangers and beggars instead of fellow townsmen’.

In its early years, the pier’s prime role was to provide for promenaders and anglers, with musical entertainment and theatre in the pavilion. Its large expanse of open decking was a parade for the better-off people, where they could not only see, but be seen in their fancy attire by the poorer folk watching them in envy from the seafront. Up to the 1970s the pier was

HASTINGS’ PIER

one of the town’s chief musical and theatrical centres, with performers such as Marie Lloyd, Harry Lauder, George Robey and The Rolling Stones. The pier was also a popular venue for other events such as political meetings and charity fairs; bingo, amusement machines and a restaurant also attracted many people.

In 1884 regular steamer services were introduced. A new landing stage was built in 1885, and another in 1890. These continued until the start of the Second World War in 1939.

Attempts to revive them after the war were unsuccessful, although there were occasional steamer services until the landing stages became unusable in the 1980s through lack of maintenance.

In October 1896 gale damage to the new St Leonards Pier smashed its timber landing stage into pieces, and beams were driven along the coast to hit Hastings Pier, damaging its ironwork structure.

The pavilion was re-roofed and enlarged in 1899, and in the early 1900s many small buildings were erected on the pier for various leisure facilities. A joywheel roundabout was put up at the landward end, opening in November 1910, but it was removed in 1914. In 1910/11 a shooting gallery and slot machines were installed, and in 1912 a rifle range and bowling alley were added. It is believed a camera obscura was erected at this time.

In 1914 the Pier Company sold 220 feet of the pier at the shoreward end to Hastings Corporation for use as a bandstand and shelter. This area became known as the ‘parade extension’. The company used the proceeds of the sale to improve the rest of the pier by erecting shops, a restaurant and a new arcade at the new entrance, with the aim of providing shelter out to the pavilion.

Then on July 15 1917 the pier’s very decorative pavilion and much of the seaward end were destroyed by fire, following a concert held for

Canadian troops stationed in the town. It was believed a discarded cigarette end was responsible. The Hastings Observer described it as ‘A wonderful Sunday afternoon spectacle’ which burnt with a ‘grandeur which was almost indescribable’.

Immediately after the First World War big changes took place. On the parade extension, a large bandstand and two curving bandstand shelters were built. In 1922 a new, larger pavilion opened at the seaward end, but it was far less attractive than the original one, and was often cruelly called an ‘aircraft hanger’ or ‘barn’.

The central length of the pier was widened to 80 feet. In 1926 the shoreward end was widened and a pavilion was built.

In the early 1930s much of the pier was rebuilt. The shoreward end pavilion, with its theatre, restaurant and pier entrance, was revamped in

art-deco style, much of which have remained as the most visible part of the pier from the promenade. The seaward end pavilion was rebuilt, with two large minarets added. The new theatre opened on July 2 1934 on the site of the previous theatre. It had increased seating and a ‘modern’ design and colour scheme.

The 1930s were the heyday of the pier. In the first week of August 1931, a staggering 56,000 people passed through the turnstiles. There was dancing every night, daytime concerts, stunt diving, speedboat trips and even a searchlight fitted to the end of the pier for youngster engaged in night-time swimming.

In 1938 there was considerable storm damage to the seaward end, with significant loss of seabed. The repairs cost over £22,000 and business was severely restricted by the necessary closure of the pavilion during the repairs.  (to be continued)

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

13

TUBERCULOSIS IN HASTINGS

T.B. — or not TB? A small, intensive, experiment at No. 8, Tackleway, Hastings

PREVIOUSLY IN THE TRAWLER, JANICE NEWCOMEN EXPRESSED CONCERN OVER EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL’S LACK OF PROVISION FOR DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN. BACK IN 1920 HASTINGS B.C WAS IN THE FOREFRONT OF EFFORTS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH POOR HOUSING AND INADEQUATE PROVISION OF HEALTH AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES.

Press Release WHO concern over extensive drug resistant TB strains that are virtually untreatable 5 September 2006, Geneva The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern over the emergence of virulent drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB) and is calling for measures to be strengthened and implemented to prevent the global spread of the deadly TB strains. This follows research showing the extent of XDR-TB, a newly-identified TB threat which leaves patients (including many people living with HIV) virtually untreatable using currently available anti-TB drugs.

E

ach year 1.7 million people die of T.B., a disease which is spread by coughing, sneezing, and spitting.

In the years following the Great War, recession and disease killed more people than all the guns and ordnance of the war. There was little in the way of effective treatment for the diseases — or the recession — and its causes were imperfectly understood.

However, there were two schools of thought on how to combat the 14

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

GRAHAM FROST REPORTS.

disease. The first was, Depistage, from a word meaning to throw off the track; the second was to raise the individual’s resistance and to reduce the dose of infection until it was no longer baneful, but beneficial, acting as a natural vaccine and conferring immunity.

The first method was practised and perfected in Continental Europe and in the US; the second in Britain.

The scheme as enacted in France, most of Europe, and America.

In France Oeuvre Grancher was the means of preventing the spread of T.B.; removing children of infected parents aged between three and ten to the country where they received free medical care and education until the age of 13. In 1925, over 2500 children from Paris were the subject of this scheme, and of that number only seven were recorded as having contracted T.B. In 1920, in France, the society known as the ‘Placement Familial des Tout-Petits’ was founded. It dealt with children from birth who were in danger of tubercular infection, especially when the source of infection was the mother. Visiting nurses and social visitors connected

with anti-tuberculosis dispensaries and Child Welfare Clinics were established. A doctor Rist spoke of the scheme: ‘We have seen the possibility of procuring for newlyborn babies in danger of family infection the protection conceived by Gracher for the second infancy (From ages four to 12) and that experience has proved to be so efficacious. We have put all this into practice in a way that is one of the best-known examples of applying definite scientific principless to the solution of a medico-social problem of a vast complexity’.

In Belgium, in 1920, the Oeuvre de Preservation de L’Enfance ( the O.P.E.) a section of the Ligue National Belge Contre la Tuberculose. had these guiding principles: (1) Children of tubercular parents are not born tubercular, they become so.

(2) The source of infection is the family.

(3) The number of infected cases increases very rapidly after birth. At puberty nearly all these children have become infected.

By 1927, 3000 children had been dealt with — and only one had died.

TUBERCULOSIS IN HASTINGS

In Oslo, Prof. Frolick obtained a positive reaction in 82 per cent of 3000 schoolchildren from T.B.infected families aged up to seven years.

In essence, this scheme treated the individual — usually a child of T.B.infected parents — and did this by removing the child from the source of the infection and the environmental and nutritional factors which weakened the child’s resistance to disease The British solution

In Britain the answer was to accept that it is possible to prevent, not the infection but its consequences, namely suffering from the infection.

This can be accomplished by: (a) raising the body’s resistance to the disease, and (b) reducing the strength or size of the infecting dose.

A corollary was added: Under these combined conditions, repeated small doses may prove to be no longer baneful, but beneficial, since they act as a vaccine and confer an immunity.

The object lessons that seemed to prove these assertions were the T.B. colonies of Papworth in Cambridgeshire, Preston Hall at Aylesford near Maidstone, Wrenbury Hall and Barrowmore Hall in Cheshire, Stanninghall in Norfolk, and Wooley Sanatorium in Northumberland.

Papworth is now best known as a centre for innovation in heart surgery.

Yet, as a T.B. colony, it changed the face of the disease’s treatment.

accidental consequence of what was intended to be a temporary appointment as County Tuberculosis Officer.

Varrier-Jones ran the Village Settlement as a benevolent dictatorship, but with energy and charm. So successful was he that the governing bodies of other faltering kindred institutions turned to him for advice, and ended up appointing him director.

Varrier Jones realised that people needed work as part of their recovery from T.B., if only to prevent morbid thoughts. Papworth Industries was set-up to provide this work, and as for the average worker — a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work — was crucial, a suitable product was needed. Pendragon was the trademark for the products made at Papworth, mainly travel goods and, later, the green goddess fire engine.

T.B and its victims

It was axiomatic that T.B. was a disease of the poor, and while all sections of the community suffered, they did not suffer in equal proportion. Those who suffered most, in overwhelming numbers, were the poorest working classes, many of whom lived in squalid surroundings that proved a fitting incubator for the germ of the disease.

Their wages were low and their workload heavy, and this combined

with an insecurity of tenure allowed only for a diet that was insufficient in quality and kind.

The sanatoria system had one drawback in that once patients were well enough to return home, they returned to the same environment whence the disease was contracted and where they might continue to spread it. The great ‘Rookeries’ of crowded communities provided the ideal soil in which T.B. could flourish. Poor housing provided the portal for the disease.

This, then, was the essence of the British method, the disease was treated holistically, the family, housing and social were all examined and a suitable plan of action was selected.

Hastings Borough Council T.B. Care Committee

H.B.C. worked largely in conjunction with the Guardianship Society of Brighton (which supervised physically and mentally handicapped children). Chairman of the Care committee was W. Bolton Tomson, who was also medical superintendent of the ‘Sea-View Sanatorium’. St. Leonards, and its Hon Sec was Miss Grace Woodhead.

No. 8 Tackleway Hastings.

‘We build houses for the healthy, why not for the unhealthy?’ was a question asked by Dr. Varrier Jones.

Reconditioning Costs of No. 8, Tackleway, Hastings Capital Expenditure: £720. 3s. 0p Estimated Annual Income and Expenditure: £62. 8s. 0p

A man of vision — Charles Pendrill Varrier Jones

The Papworth Village Settlement was, above all, the brain-child of Charles Pendrill Varrier-Jones (18831941), a research worker for the Cambridge pathologis,t German Sims Woodhead, who virtually stumbled into his métier as founder of this industrial settlement, as an October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

15

TUBERCULOSIS IN HASTINGS

In his 1927 annual report, Poplar’s Medical Officer of Health stated that the L.C.C. has given special preference to T.B. sufferers for houses on their estates at Becontree and Downham, but added that ‘high rents and inaccessibility as regards work proved a difficulty in many cases’.

At Hastings, in order to give a practical demonstration of the best way to meet these difficulties, the County Borough of Hastings’ Tuberculosis Care Committee purchased a house in the poorer part of the town — but in a very healthy area — and converted it into two four-room maisonettes.

Each maisonette was to be let to a tubercular patient — man or woman — whose disease was in an arrested, quiescent or much-improved stage, and the rent was to be set so that the yield on the money invested would be four to five per cent.

Most builders at the time would have told you the cost of labour and material would have made it impossible to build a house and let it to a worker at an economic rent, which they could afford to pay.

The T.B. Care Committee claimed, therefore, that reconditioning houses, as opposed to building them, was the way to solve the problem. The result was No.8 Tackleway.

Description of house and plan.

No. 8, Tackleway is situated 80 feet above sea level, and faces E.S.E,, with the grassy slopes of the East Hill rising in front. To the south the road overlooks the open sea.

The premises were reconditioned and converted into two maisonettes, each containing a kitchen, parlour, bathroom and two bedrooms.

Walls and ceilings were refaced and distempered with Anchorite Distemper — the floors were covered with red Ruberoid and all crevices where dust might accumulate were eliminated as far as possible Modern baths, toilets, sinks and 16

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

combined coppers for supplying hot water to baths were installed, and the drainage renewed throughout.

Mains water, gas and electric light were laid in and the work was completed on August 31, 1928 The first tenant took possession of the upper maisonette on September 10 1928 at a rent of 12/6p per week for the upper maisonette and 11/6p for the lower.

Gas fires provided the heating as coal was considered too dirty and tiresome to use; electricity was too expensive — even at 1 penny per kilowatt hour!

From today’s perspective, this ‘nanny’ or even ‘big brother’ approach seems overbearing, but it was carried out, not by ‘user groups’ or ‘management task forces’, but by caring, committed, people of vision.

Something altogether lacking among the self-aggrandisers of St. Annes Crescent, Lewes.

What happened to the experiment?

By 1941 — with improved hygiene, housing and diet and effective surgical and pharmacological medical intervention — tuberculosis had abated, so the experiment had been successful, but because of the war and its consequences, largely forgotten.  G.F. If any reader has further information on this social experiment we would be pleased to hear from them.

Sources: Some Methods for the Treatment of Tuberculosis

by W. Bolton Tomson, Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, London, 1929 http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/archives /projects/papworth/papworth5.htm http://www.who.int/tb/features_archive/xdrtb/en/ index.html

Nuff Said! In 1987 Trawler publisher Graham Frost applied for a job as physics teacher at William Parker School. This was the reply he received from the good, ‘Christian’, headmaster, R.J. Mitchell, whose later ‘gut reaction’ led him to appoint Sion Jenkins and groom him for the post of headmaster. As he so presciently pointed out, other people did ‘suffer from his judgments’!

The Zanzibar — ‘less formal than your average hotel!’

PROFILE

O’Rourke’s Drift

by Kate Lingard

AN INDIAN SUMMER IN HASTINGS AND THE PERFECT LOCATION FOR THE LUXURY OF THE ZANZIBAR INTERNATIONAL HOTEL ON ST. LEONARDS’ SEAFRONT, WHICH IS RIDING THE SURF OF SUCCESS AND BECOMING NATIONALLY RECOGNISED FOR ITS HIGHLY ELEGANT, EXOTIC STYLE.

THE TRAWLER’S KATE LINGARD ZANZIBAR’S ADVENTUROUS OWNER, MAX O’ROURKE.

W

ow, is this what I’ve done?” was Max O’Rourke’s modest reaction following the overwhelming national publicity for ‘The Zanzibar’ since it’s opening in July 2005. A chance visit by Times’ journalist Cath Urquhart, whose high rating put it firmly on the list of Best Hotels, completely stunned the young owner.

Having just returned on an errand and casually attired in jeans, Max and I sat in the airy splendour of the South America suite, as he described his amazement at the rush of publicity that followed.

The ‘Zanzibar’ was nominated one of the Top Five Hotels of 2005 in The Times, followed by positive reviews in The Observer and The Telegraph. A recent article, headlined ‘Sumptuous on Sea’, by Nick Curtis of The Evening Standard has further helped to shine a more positive light on Hastings.

‘From having just one inquiry the previous week, we were then inundated with 160 calls after the Times’ rating, and it hasn’t stopped since’, remarks a bemused Max. ‘We had only been open three months and this made it clear that I’d done something quite special. We started with very tentative, slow, steps — no advertising or PR — as we still had to

SPOKE TO

THE

complete the building, and I wanted to find the right furniture and fittings over time, rather than just fill it with anything for the sake of being finished and open.’

The Zanzibar’s seven, stunning, themed rooms — Africa, South America, Antarctica, Egypt, India, Japan and Morocco — are named after the countries and continents Max has travelled around. They are all exquisitely furnished and decorated, some with artefacts shipped back home for the hotel. Other objets d’art have been sourced from local junk shops, antique shops. and even Pebsham tip turned up ‘a fabulous looking travel trunk that has so much history’ It looks like it’s been around the world and back again in an era where travelling was far more challenging than it is today’. While touring the rooms, I noticed the wonderful Hastings Today book by Nick Hanna and Tim Cross lay on the bedside tables — certainly a change from the Bible!

Max is now enjoying the hard work and satisfaction of running his own show at The Zanzibar after spending years working locally.

‘We moved down here soon after I was born in London in 1971 and, as I October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

17

PROFILE

grew up here, I consider myself to be from Hastings’. Max studied French for two terms in Reading before returning to Hastings in 1991 when his father suffered a stroke. He took over the family business on the Pier before building, opening and running the nightclub ‘Pier Pressure’ — which turned out to be exactly that. ‘It was hell’, he remarks, ‘but it taught me so much — about business, people, how difficult things can be and most definitely what not to do’.

In 1999, the pressure turned into liquidation, which, Max claims, ‘was the best day of my life! I vowed after that I would never be a slave to business again’. He invested what he had, buying and letting property in the town, while travelling every winter between 2000 and 2004. However, despite working solidly over the past two years with a team of trusted builders and a small team of hotel staff who ‘can do everything’, Max believes his new venture to be ‘as good and as satisfying as the adventures I had when travelling’.

In creating such luxury, one could easily assume that Max might have enjoyed similar on his travels. ‘Huts for roughly £3 a night and a few yards from the beach were my hotels’.

Apart from the fun times, his taste for adventure took him to some extreme situations.

Climbing Kilamanjaro with a guide who didn’t know the way; he and the guide came close to death (well, they did go up the difficult route). ‘The push for the summit should have been a routine five-hour hike; instead we ended up doing technical climbing for eleven hours!’ While diving 250km off the Northern Australian coast ‘A storm blew up on the surface, dragging the boat onto the reef. They had to get out of there, but did so before I was back on board’. In the Chilean desert, ‘A friend and I were held up by bandits, assuming we were carrying “a consignment of merchandise” they were trying to stop going over the border from Bolivia’. After finally 18

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

convincing them of their innocence and being released, they had to reluctantly return (in temperatures dropping to minus-15) to plead with the bandits for help after their vehicle became stuck in a river. ‘We were in the middle of nowhere’.

Despite all this, he has no qualms about having pushed himself to the edge. ‘I believe that we all have a destiny and if my time had been up, that would’ve been it. ‘I’ve just never been adverse to a bit of adventure’.

While Max captured the ‘incredible scenery — volcanoes, salt-flats, natural peaks’, he also witnessed the extreme poverty most of the countries’ inhabitants endured, which affected him quite deeply. ‘Before I travelled, I never realised the fact that it was only the top three per cent of people in the world who have a job, roof over their head and three meals a day. The weird thing is that it is the people who are virtually void of material possessions who seem to be the happiest — content to be able to have food on their table’.

Back on home turf, Max and his stalwart band of builders are in the process of completing the zen-like garden, which will take The Zanzibar to completion. Plans to open a Members Bar for Hastings is in the

pipeline. ‘This was an opportunity to restore a beautiful Victorian building, but adding some contemporary touches’. He used the support of local suppliers to fit the right facilities for each room (a deep, Japanese soak bath in the Japanese suite, or ‘high-spec’ sauna/shower in Antarctica) and the response to this has made his labour of love worthwhile. ‘I want to give people an experience they’re unlikely to have at home and for The Zanzibar to be different, less formal than your average hotel!’

Demand is such that, at present, the three large seafront-facing rooms (Africa, South America and Antarctica) are fully-booked until November. ‘Up until recently, guests could be in Japan one night, Antarctica the next if a seafront room became available’, states Max, referring to the Hotel’s relaxed attitude to guests changing rooms when feasible.

It’s hard to have to tear yourself away from The Zanzibar, but it has to happen eventually. ‘There were no architectural plans for The Zanzibar’ Max remarks, ‘Everything was just in my head as to how I wanted it to be.

I just couldn’t bear to be on my deathbed thinking ‘I wish I’d …’

An unlikely scenario. K.L.

HASTINGS LIFE

W

elcome to the column that’s going to put some blood in the veins of The Trawler. What is a trawler?

It’s a ship that drags a large net, usually in the shape of a sock or bag at deep levels beneath the sea. Boring. The only people who read this magazine are a few old boffins in the old town, whose mission in life is to win the Stag’s pub quiz every week, or they will lose the will to live. Have you ever been to it?

You have to be an ex-Mastermind contestant to have even the glimmer of a chance of answering any questions correctly. You won’t find questions like ‘what is the name of the character in Coronation Street who sells cakes and buns?’ or ‘how many members are there in the band Blink 182?’ You’ll have to go to the Dolphin for that.

At my first Stag quiz I went along with a few friends and neighbours. We fancied a laugh and a pint and had heard there was free grub afterwards.

I’ve never spent a more excruciatingly painful couple of hours in all my life.

I’m sure the quizmaster was wearing a leather mask and cracking a whip at one point but it may have been aneurysminduced hallucination. Halfway through I hadn’t managed to get one single answer right. I was woken up from my near coma when I heard ‘which common, purple, fruit shares its name with the ornamental shrub Rubus cockburneanus? I knew the answer! I was so excited I nearly screamed it across the room. Finally, my NVQ in horticultural had come in handy. The

euphoria was shortlived however and I spent the remainder of the quiz feigning a ‘deep-in-thought searching-the-vast caverns-of-my mind’ expression, while carving my name into the table leg.

Fortunately, my husband and my friend’s partner were managing to answer a lot of the questions correctly. Men are naturals at this sort of thing. They’ve been filling their brains with useless information to impress each other with, since they first learned to string a sentence together.

Our table was right next to the reigning champions: the boffins. We had to swap our answer sheets with them to be corrected. After the first round we had half-filled the A4 piece of paper with large, scrawling, handwriting that had been scribbled out a number of times. We had also drawn a few diagrams and cartoons that they chuckled at. The boffins had used a ruler to divide the page into columns.

Each column had the title of each round written neatly at the top, in capitals and underlined. After what we realised was a humiliating first round, they handed us back our grubby page with the addition of crosses and smiled smugly. That was enough to make me determined to beat these buggers at any cost. We came last, but I was left with the conviction to return with a stronger, better-equipped team. And I made sure I was first in the queue for the muchneeded comfort food at the end.

It isn’t a young person’s quiz. You need to have lived a life to take on a challenge of this magnitude. So when my parents-in-law law came to visit, I nonchalantly suggested it would be a laugh to have a pint at the Stag pub, since it was quiz night and you get free grub afterwards. My father-in-law is a Professor of English so that covered the literature round. My mother-in-law is of the generation who had endless facts and figures poured into them during

their school years and would be beaten senseless if ever a wrong answer was given; an ideal candidate for this quiz.

Everyone agreed it would be a great idea. By coincidence, we ended up sitting next to the boffins again, who smiled smugly at us. I mentioned to my mother-in-law that the table of respectable gents to our right usually always won. This unleashed the most unexpected and ferocious competitive streak that helped catapult us into the top three after the first few rounds. The boffins, who realised they were facing a serious new challenge, stopped congratulating us when they handed back our corrected sheets. They stopped smiling smugly and started looking very worried and uncomfortable. Their faces became all red and sweaty. After one particularly fraught round one of them queried one of the quizmaster’s answers.

There was a sharp intake of breath.

They argued the point but the quizmaster wasn’t going to back down.

So they were left mumbling and fuming to themselves. I tried not to laugh loudly.

We didn’t win, unfortunately. Out of the blue a table over on the other side of the room had forged into the lead and kept that position until the very end.

But we had beaten the boffins. We were second. They were third. I was delighted. They sat in a cloud of despair holding their heads in their hands. One of them stormed out banging the door behind him. I’ve never had a more enjoyable evening in all my life.

If anyone knows the answer to the question that I got right, write in to The Trawler and the winner will receive a prize.  E. E.

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

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PROFILE — CLAIRE HAMILL

The nightingale of Warrior Square —Claire Hamill

by Joy Melville BEING A SINGER IS TOUGH. FASHIONS COME AND GO, PUNK REPLACES ROCK, SUPER-GROUPS REPLACE SOLO SINGERS: YOU HAVE TO JUMP ON AND OFF THE MERRYGO-ROUND AT THE RIGHT TIME.

C

laire Hamill, a singer with a beautiful voice, hasn’t had it easy. But despite the ups and downs she’s survived and looks to the future with optimism. ‘I’m doing something I love,’ she says, ‘I love singing and writing songs.’

Born in Teeside, the eldest of seven children, her mother went to the pawnshop and for £3.50 bought Claire her first guitar. ‘I was stagestruck from an early age,’ says Claire, ‘as my father was involved in amateur dramatics. I really wanted to be an actress and at 16, with the convent’s encouragement, I was studying for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. But I was also writing songs and singing. Most girl singers then — it was the late sixties — were following in the steps of singers like Joan Baez and I suppose it was unusual to write your own songs.’

The manager of the club certainly thought so. He appointed himself Claire’s manager, knew Island Records, and they promptly signed 20

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

“Her voice is like the sound of a lonely seabird echoing across an industrial estuary” NME, 1972 her up. Her first album was released in 1971 when she was 17. Farewell Guildhall.

The songs she wrote for the album were in collaboration with a boyfriend. ‘He wrote poetry,’ she says, ‘and the songs I wrote with him had real depth and colour and gave me more credibility than a 16 or 17 year old schoolgirl would have had.’

Her second album, made when she was 18, mainly consisted of songs she had written about growing up. ‘I have always written about my life,’ says Claire. ‘My first single was called

When I was a Child. But I’m not a prolific writer as the songs have to come out of me, rather than my having to go looking for them. I don’t like writing to order. Writing to me has always been something almost spiritual and I’ve never wanted to make it materialistic and commercial.

But my work has been criticised as being too personal. I was never quite of my time.’

Looking at Claire, her fair hair falling over her shoulders, you can see the softness and the vulnerability.

She’s not in-your-face brash, as so many singers are.

Still under 20 she next made a tour of America and while singing to an audience of some 20,000 in Canada’s Maple Leaf Gardens, her father, who had left the family to live over there, turned up backstage. ‘He opened his arms wide,’ she remembers. ‘But I was still hurt at him leaving us — it was only five years since he had — and at the time I couldn’t respond.

I’ve written a lot of songs about abandonment and loss and relationships.’

Her manager suggested she work with Ray Davies, lead singer of the Kinks. ‘I was a terrible girl,’ Claire recalled, ‘very wilful and did not always take advice, though underneath I was quite unsure of myself. I turned down having a TV special on me — something I still regret — as I did not feel confident enough, but I did appear on The Old Grey Whistle Test.’

Her confidence grew and, leaving Island Records, she decided to set up her own band. ‘I had been a solo singer, I was working in a rock world, and thought that was the route I should go down. Everyone was against me having a band and that made me cross,’ she says. ‘But finally Ray got a deal in America and brought me over there and I was given the money to put the Claire Hamill band together. We toured all the major cities and I was singing my own music. Ray produced our first

PROFILE — CLAIRE HAMILL

Claire Hamill

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

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PROFILE — CLAIRE HAMILL

album, Stage Door Johnnies. I was only about 21 and it was a great experience and developed me musically. After that I came back to England and worked to produce my own record.’

She was writing songs at a time when girl singers and song writers were not that popular. It was the era of super-groups. She remembers the business being incredibly chauvinistic. ‘I had always seen myself as an equal to men and never really played the girly thing to get cooperation. Girls were expected to come across with the goods, but I wanted respect for my work and did not want to sleep my way to the top.’

Another musician Claire met wanted to form a country and western band with her (‘men always want to control you’), but as she says, with a laugh, ‘While I was going into country and western, everyone else was going into punk music.’

A new manager wanted her to work with the successful rock band, Wishbone Ash, and together with one of the members of the band wrote one of their most popular songs, Living Proof. She was to make two albums with them and tour with the band as backing singer. She found that hard. ‘I was very attentionseeking on stage, jumping around.

One of the band members took me aside one day and asked if I could tone it down a bit. It was like a dagger in my heart. I felt so exuberant, all that rock band around me. The music takes you over.’

The band was in two minds as to whether to make her a permanent member. But at 25, Claire married and revived her solo career, one of her new singles being called First Night in New York. ‘That got me Radio One attention. But it was a climate of punk and I had been attached to a previous era. Those of us singing prior to 1976 were called “Old Wave”.’ It must make you head for the gin to be told you are ‘old wave’ in your mid-twenties.

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Although from the age of 30 to 35 Claire had three children, she continued making albums. One called Voices, an experimental album using the voice to create tonal layers, went to No.1 in the New Age charts (New Age was an emerging genre of music, rather ethereal and floaty). It was a breakthrough for her husband’s label, Landscape, and Claire did a national tour with an all-girl band also called ‘The Voices’. ‘We laughed a lot,’ she says, ‘and travelled around in a minibus. I made a bed in it for my children to sleep in.’

Claire’s husband was successful and they were living in a Georgian mansion with nine bedrooms. Poor investment ended the house then the marriage and Claire, with no money, moved with the children from Crowborough to Hastings.

‘It makes you strong, not living the charmed life any more,’ she says, ‘and having to deal with failure and loss. I didn’t start singing immediately, but I was introduced to a local musician, Andrew, and he encouraged me to sing. I had been used to singing in concert halls and theatres, but now I had to start back at the bottom.’ They released an album called Summer in

1997 which they’d co-written. Claire now has her own label, Archway Music. She has recently released an album of songs called The Lost and the Lovers and an EP called When Are Wars Won? She is currently working on a compilation of her favourite songs.

‘I have got to the point in my life where I now have control,’ she says.

‘And it would be very hard to give it up. Record companies today are very much interested in the young and the beautiful and the new and I am none of these things. Well, beautiful yes, we all are. Still, if I had the right offer, I wouldn’t be averse to it.’

Will she stay in Hastings? ‘Yes,’ she says, with enormous enthusiasm. ‘It’s the centre of the universe, the St Tropez of the south. The people there are the friendliest I have ever met.

You don’t have to have a lot of money to have a good lifestyle and you are never lonely in Hastings. There’s always something to do and it’s a very creative place. Everyone who lives in Hastings loves it.’ She looks to her future with equal enthusiasm . Claire will be appearing at the White Rock Hotel, Hastings, on 18 November, in a charity gig to raise money for Guatamala.

Claire Hamill — Discography

1971

One house left standing

Island

1972

October

Island

1974

Stage door johnnies

Konk

1975

Abracadabra

Konk

1980

First night in New York

Warner Bros.

1981

24 hours from Tulsa

Beggars Banquet

1982

Jump/In the palm of my hand

Coda

1983

The moon is a powerful lover

Coda

1984

Touchpaper

Coda

1986

Voices

Landscape

1987

Jerusalem and the Domesday Book

Landscape

1989

Love in the afternoon

Landscape

1989

Someday we’ll all be together

Landscape

1995

The moon is a powerful lover-Remix

White Label

1997

Summer (with Andrew Warren)

Voiceprint

2005

The lost and the lovers

Archway Music

2005

When are wars won?

Archway music

REFLECTIONS

Tall Tales of the Hastings Caves

by Margaret Busby

N

ow, it may just be possible that what I am about to tell you isn’t true. You know how it is with memories — some things you would swear on your life that you remember turn out to have been impossible.

You are absolutely sure you recall sitting on some aged aunt’s warm knee, the comforting rustle of her taffeta skirt, the sweet whiff of the lavender talcum powder she loved, the soothing lullaby she hummed… except that it is on record that she died several years before you were even conceived.

It’s a bit like that with me about the Hastings Caves, but in reverse. I definitely went there during my school days. That much is indisputable. Between boarding school in Bexhill-on-Sea, and holiday-home in Catsfield (near Battle, Sussex, England, Great Britain, Europe, The World, The Universe), outings to most of the towns along the English south coast were a feature of my childhood. But my recollection of what exactly happened there is less reliable, much as my knowledge of English history was permanently distorted by having

read that memorable book 1066 and All That, whose title referenced the year of the Battle of Hastings. (How come that took place at Battle, a place which didn’t exist at the time, or if it did, why don’t people talk about the Battle of Battle?)

You may wonder where this is all leading. Please bear with me, but be warned: never ask me for directions.

I am notorious for my lack of any sense of how to get to where I am going (although, of course, I always arrive somewhere). There was the time I took a plane from Trinidad in the West Indies, heading for the neighbouring island of Dominica, where friends and relatives waited, only to end up on the neighbouring island of Antigua. Or the occasion I meant to take the London underground from Farringdon station to West Hampstead and found myself instead on a non-stop train to Luton. Unplanned, but interesting. Life has its own symmetry.

Well, it was all bound to be a bit confusing for an eight-year-old African child, newly arrived in Sussex, but it was nevertheless

fascinating, just as the presence of my sister and me — ‘the little African girls’ — probably intrigued those who had never before encountered black people in the latter 1950s and early sixties when I first made my acquaintance with Hastings.

Let me tell you about my school. It was called Charters Towers — CTS for short — and was located in Hastings Road, Bexhill, a long way from the Gold Coast in West Africa where I was born. (The school was apparently named after a town in Queensland, Australia, which I once looked up in a reference book.

Apparently the town’s claims to fame were its boarding schools, which catered for remote rural families, and its gold, the discovery of which had an appealing story. On Christmas Eve in 1871, an aboriginal boy named Jupiter was with a small group of prospectors. Their horses bolted after a flash of lightning and Jupiter was sent to search for them. He not only found the horses but also a nugget of gold, and his lucky strike is still commemorated in venues called Jupiter’s Casinos on the Australian Gold Coast. ‘A good name is better October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

23

REFLECTIONS

than riches,’ said Cervantes in Don Quixote, though I do hope the clever lad was suitably rewarded — I would surely have got lost myself, never mind finding anything.)

CTS comprised a row of conjoined red-brick buildings, adorned with white-painted porches and bay windows, that sat primly upright like elderly spinsters in their Sunday best at a tea party, skirted by crunchy gravel and manicured shrubs. The headmistress was an equally upright and austere matriarch who taught Geography. No doubt to encourage team spirit (or tribal loyalty), we girls were randomly assigned to four ‘houses’ named after counties, each associated with a colour: Hampshire (green), Kent (red), Surrey (yellow) and Sussex (blue). I was told I was in ‘Hants’ (just when I had got used to the idea of actually being in Sussex).

On the hockey field and netball court, our great rivals were two other local schools, Ancaster House and Battle Abbey. Ironically, all three schools would, decades later, merge and amalgamate their names, but at the time we Charterians proudly sang our own school song, its chorus rising hysterically: ‘Semper fidelis…semper fidelis!’ (Faithful to what, we never questioned.)

By contrast with the ordered school regimen, our holidays were a chaos of freedom usually spent at an anarchically run establishment called Old Farm Place, which catered for the children of parents who were otherwise engaged or (in the case of my sister and me) whose parents couldn’t afford to fly them back

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home. It was run (sort of ) by a larger-than-life eccentric called Verily Anderson, founder of a dynasty of writers, who thought nothing of augmenting her own family of five rambunctious children with another dozen or so. She turned her experiences into a book, Beware of Children, the blurb of which lists other inmates as ‘a boy with homicidal instincts, a too welldeveloped Persian schoolgirl and the two charming shop-lifting sons of an Arab sheik’. The dramatis personae also included two little African girls, whose party trick was to clamber — unseen and identically dressed — into a huge cardboard box, from which one head and one pair of legs protruded, whereupon the body would be impressively ‘sawn in half ’ by a magician. Everything isn’t always what it seems.

Anyway, somewhere along the road to adolescence I found myself listening to traditional jazz in the Hastings Caves. The chart-topping Temperance Seven were playing, their lead singer’s expression as gloomy as the subterranean lighting, which was occasionally pierced by the flashlight of a photographer from the local paper. I was with a group of young people, all older and worldlier than me, intemperate art students with nicknames such as Stodge and Mouse. The cocky young men had perfected a peculiar ritual they called jiving, which involved flinging the right leg out in a stiff-legged hopskipping action, as though wearing a splint, at the same time turning your head away from your partner to look

nonchalantly over the left shoulder, eyes half-closed, proffering a masterful hand to twirl her till she rotated dizzily like a top — the whole difficult procedure ultra-cool if you could pull it off. As I marvelled, much to my surprise a rather gormless bloke I had never seen before, wearing a loud checked shirt, asked me to dance. I wanted to refuse but didn’t find the words in time to cancel out the politeness that was my default mode, and seconds later I too was on the floor, trying to capture that insouciant look that all the girls wore under their beehives. I might have been able to boast that I pulled off a star turn but for the fact that the man from the Hastings and St Leonard’s Observer captured the moment: days later, a scary photograph of me and Mr CheckedShirt, looking like rabbits caught in the proverbial headlights, leapt out of the features pages like a horrid warning.

‘Oh, you railway station! Oh, you Pullman train,’ sang the Temperance Seven. ‘Here’s my reservation for my destination…Far beyond the western plains to see my….’ I thought of my tropical home, far beyond the Sussex Downs, while they sang about their ‘Home in Pasadena’. That’s in California; I just looked it up. Mind you, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. Apparently the Gold Coast is in Las Vegas. Oh, and the Hastings Caves are near Hobart, in Tasmania.

And, by the way, I didn’t have an aged aunt in taffeta, either.  M.B.

REFLECTIONS

My Sussex Girlhood

by Julie Christie

G

rowing up on the Sussex coast...I was despatched to a Hove kindergarten school at the age of six, having been sent back to England from India where my father was a teaplanter. I stayed at first with my granny in a rambling Victorian house with stained glass windows, a huge conservatory and a brilliant walled garden — all gone now. Then I lived with a foster-mother in Bexhill where I went to day school.

I remember picnics on Bexhill beach with my large comforting fostermother, Aunt Elsie, in her large bathing suit with her large white legs. I was a titch and must have looked like a hamster in a bathing costume beside her; sand in our white bread jam sandwiches; walking back past the prewar terraced houses, my auntie wearing a soft summer dress in the kind of print we so cherish if we can find it nowadays; my racy girlfriend, Susan Abbott, wearing Bexhill’s first bikini; sitting beside my auntie outside

the De La Warr Pavilion, listening to an orchestra playing easy classics and to a large woman — perhaps everything seemed large to me then — in evening dress singing The Dream of Oliver.

When I met the writer David Hare much later in life, he reminded me that I was at the same elocution and drama school as him in Bexhill. I remember there were County of Sussex public exams at which we were graded on our performances. I recall one because I have an ancient cutting which my mother must have kept which says ‘Diminutive Julie Christie gave a lively rendering of...’ something or other.

What other memories? My mother returning home from India and deciding I needed ‘a better education’ which resulted in being sent to the Convent of Our Lady, a boarding school in Hastings. There were ‘nature walks’ in the beautiful fields round Hastings and I remember falling into a stream, which to me, then, was too

wide to jump over. I decided to be a nun when I grew up although I was regarded as a ‘heathen’ because I wasn’t a Roman Catholioc and couldn’t take communion. One of the nuns came round the bedroom at night and found me making faces for the entertainment of the other girls and told me ‘stop making faces, Julie Christie, you’re ugly enough as it is’.

I was expelled and sent to another boarding school at High Wycombe where I was expelled not for making faces but for telling ‘dirty stories’. But in a way all these memories could be from anywhere as could my time at Technical College in Brighton, where my memories are of coffee bars, boys, Tommy Steele on the jukebox, beat poetry, black stockings and duffel coats.

Many years later I went back to stay with friends in Hastings and found it to be a beautiful, overgrown fishing village and thought there could be nowhere nicer to live in England.J.C  October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

25

FOOD

Table Talk

by M.A.D.

A

word of praise at the start this month's column goes to The Friday Market at Old Saints Hall in All Saints Street. OK. you have to queue, be fast and prepared to leave empty-handed if unlucky, but there’s always the cup of tea and a bun, fresh out of someone’s oven for consolation.

However, if you are lucky you get that home- grown/baked taste in tomatoes, pies (sweet and savory) and whatever else is on offer. And flowers are an absolute bargain. An initiative deserving applause.

I wish I had not decided to go to Harris Restaurant & Tapas Bar in the High Street on a rainy Sunday. I expected to be cheered by sunny food, Spanish temperament and friendly service. Instead I got an unbelievable long wait for the menu, an even longer wait for a sad, dry Spanish omelette with that horrible, horrible ‘Cuisine de France’ par-baked bread, rock-hard butter and a lukewarm coffee. Before you think ‘busy Sunday Lunchtime’ let me stop you. It was early, there was one table of four nearing their meal, a table of two sipping wine, waiting for theirs. It filled up later and I dread to think how long their waiting time will have been. The second coffee was slightly warmer, but got sloshed all over the saucer. A rather disappointing experience, especially since location and space are top of the range.

Perhaps there’s one of the reasons: guaranteed street traffic = poor quality and even poorer service...

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No such complaint about Maggie's Café above the Fish Market. No matter how busy they are, they take time to say hello, have a chat or a warning ‘it might be a while’. Wendy deserves a ‘best front-of-house’ medal.

There is something humbling about sitting outside on a tiny balcony (posh word for what is really only a platform) just above a working harbour where men are mending nets, dogs are playing, boats are coming in, tourists pass. It is good to be forced to reflect on the labour, the risk, the uncertainty that go into landing beautiful fish and on the privilege of virtually getting it from the boat on the plate.

On one of my visits the ‘Special’ was skate. Now there is skate and there is Skate. This one was SKATE: thick, tight strips of white flesh, a batter (this is England) so light it was almost transparent and a decent portion of chunky chips; soft on the inside, crunchy only on the bite. If you want to push the boat out, they have a wine licence, otherwise stick to tea. I noticed reserved signs on some of the tables so you can book and avoid disappointment.

A word of thanks to those who took up the Best Fish & Chips nomination challenge. All places will be visited and put through their paces.

Having walked the seafront many times by now I couldn’t help the multitude of ‘fresh, local fish’ signs next to, above or on the menus which invariably have cod at the top. Now fishermen tell me there is a restriction on cod. Local fish? Fresh fish? Just asking... In season in October: plaice, bass, huss, whiting. Eat seasonal, insist on local!

A well-loved ‘local’ of a different kind is the Filo (First in, last out pub in the High Street). Known for its warming fire in the cold months, it boasts its own four ales (brewed on site by Tony) and serves a pub lunch.

The menu is divided in Light Bites, Big Bites, Salads and Sweet Bites. A word of warning, do order your

pudding with your main meal if you are on the late side because the Chef takes the left overs home! Full marks for waste management. but no comment on the Apple and Raspberry crumble, which we missed. We chose roast chicken with couscous which came with pitta, some spinach, fresh beet and, unfortunately, coleslaw. The coleslaw itself was fine, it just unbalanced the rest. The couscous was fluffy and moist while the chicken had a hint of apricot. An example of unpretentious but honest, easy, food.

Reading through the menu I noticed a few ‘old time favourites’ like liver and bacon and bubble & squeak, as well as fish cakes. All of these will no doubt go well during their forthcoming Beer Festival.

It will take me a while to eat at all the Hastings pubs serving food. But I did go to the Jenny Lind and the Dragon Bar on more than one occasion. The ‘Jenny’, as their regulars call it, has the benefit of a garden overlooking Courthouse Street. Their sandwiches and appetisers are generous in size, freshly prepared and well presented. Their cooked meals can go either way, always acceptable, but I get the feeling that ‘slightly out of the ordinary’ dishes are a bit hitand-miss. Stick to what you know best, would be my advice or else refine, practise, taste before putting your creation on the table. The same goes for the Dragon Bar (best to go for lunch if you want to be able to hear yourself think. It gets loud and crowded in the evenings.) They are trying to go the ‘gastro-pub’ way and at times they succeed. Full marks for their catch-of-the-day dishes, for bringing some cheese to the table, although their prices are a bit steep for what’s on offer. Their steak is fine but not spectacular, the waitress didn’t ask how I wanted it cooked so I got it ‘well done’ as were the potatoes. ‘Too well and too noticeably well done. The chef must have been looking elsewhere when cooking and plating them. The same goes for the wild

FOOD

mushrooms, of which there were too few given they were supposed to be the attraction, and their overcooking completely obliterated their taste.

Up Silverhill you’ll find Tiffin Time, an unpretentious sandwich bar.

And it’s great. A good choice of breads, crunchy lettuce, tomatoes cut when needed, generous fillings, friendly service, decent coffee, nice price. I hope they will not get fancy ideas...

I don’t like closing on a negative, but this is the exception confirming the rule. Since honest, unadulterated food features largely on my list of priorities, I wanted give you all some useful information about organic products.

I contacted Trinity Foods twice, hoping to get some enthusiastic response and got none. A shop needs more than products. It needs product and service knowledge and above all it needs passion. M.A.D. 

Places mentioned Harris Restaurant &Tapas Bar 58 High Street Hastings 01424 437 221 Maggie's Fishmarket Café Rock-a-Nore Road Hastings 01424 430205 Filo 14/15 High Street Hastings 01424 425 079 www.filo.co.uk Jenny Lind 69 High Street Hastings 01424 421 392 Dragon Bar 71 George Street Hastings 01424 423 688 Tiffin Time Silverhill 01424 432 629

October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

27

FICTION

The Wedding

Lesley Prince

by Pauline Melville

H

e came into the bathroom of their hotel room in Toronto and asked her to marry him. It was his third try. She was vigorously towelling her black hair after washing it. The sight of her slim ivory shoulders as she bent forward in front of the steamedup mirror, beads of moisture on her shoulder-blades, made his mouth go dry. He leaned against the doorpost: “Will you marry me, Juno?”

She tossed her head back and looked round at him with a startled expression. He was tall and dark with a whisper of a moustache and stood there in his shirt sleeves. For five years they had been living together in London. Perhaps it was this visit to his Jewish family in Toronto that prompted this latest proposal. He was smiling at her with good-natured resignation as if expecting rejection yet again. She felt a burst of affection for him: “Yes. I will.”

He scooped her into a joyful embrace amidst the snowdrift of white hotel towels. They ordered champagne and rushed off to tell his family.

I first knew Juno when she came to live with us in Manchester after enrolling as a student there. I had been 28

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

a childhood friend of her father and his sisters before I moved north. The family were neighbours of ours in Ealing. They were half-Brazilian and half-English with striking El Greco faces. When she arrived to stay, Juno said that I was the first adult woman she had been able to speak to about what happened.

She and her brother had been aged six and four when their mother deserted them. They were both remarkably beautiful children with black wavy hair, dark eyes and a tendency to dissolve into giggles. As she grew up Juno heard rumours about her mother. She had apparently been involved in a lesbian relationship when she ran away. Then she had become a buddhist and spent months chanting in an isolated commune in the north of Scotland. And then silence for years. By the time Juno came to live with us at the age of nineteen she was vivacious but troubled and desperate to find out what had happened to her mother.

We spent long nights talking about it over cups of tea and glasses of wine.

Eventually, Juno contacted an agency that traces missing people.

Her mother was living in a damp

basement flat in Camberwell. She agreed with some reluctance to meet her daughter. It was not a success.

Juno did not recognise the woman with the thin long face and straggly blonde hair who answered the door.

Her mother spent most of the encounter smoking and staring out of the window as if she could not wait for Juno to leave. But they made an arrangement to meet again a month later. When Juno turned up on the appointed day her mother had moved and the flat was empty.

Juno went to a counsellor for help.

She seemed to gain some benefit from the weekly sessions and eventually graduated and went off to work in Canada as a human resources officer for Standard Life. There she met David Silverstein and his close-knit family of torrential talkers. He was patient and kind. She appreciated his optimism. He worked for a charity that supported Russian Jews. The work took him frequently to London.

Soon the two of them moved back to England and lived there together.

David understood that Juno’s shying away from marriage was to do with her painful history. He gently persisted with his proposals.

The wedding was to taking place on the south coast, in Hastings, where Juno’s father had settled with his second wife. I caught the train down from Manchester. I had a longawaited hospital appointment in the morning and so would miss the ceremony but arrive in time for the reception. Some of my old friends — people I hadn’t seen for twenty-five years — including Juno’s aunts, would be there. The ceremony was to be followed by a feast in the George Street Hall. After the meal, when the tables had been cleared, a Brazilian band would play for guests to enjoy themselves until late into the night.

Thirty of David’s relatives had flown over from Toronto for the occasion.

I pushed open the door of the hall.

It was dark inside. There was a glimmer from the white tablecloths.

FICTION

Some hundred people were seated on either side of the long tables that formed a square. The debris of leftover food and half-empty wine glasses remained visible between foliage and alternating bowls of crimson and white roses. As I entered there was a roar of laughter and applause as the last speech came to an end. People rose from the table and started to move around greeting each other.

I saw Juno immediately. She wore a long, white, slim-fitting strapless dress with a stiffened bodice and she was darting among the guests, radiantly happy. The groom seemed in a dream smiling at everybody. I approached Juno’s Aunt Sylvia, whom I hadn’t seen since childhood. She took a moment to recognise me and then squealed and grasped my hands: “Oh, it’s so good to see you. I’ve been so emotional. I was in floods of tears during the speeches.”

“Were you thinking about Juno’s mother?”

“I suppose I was. Oh, I don’t know.

Everything.” She wore a grey fake-fur waistcoat which I could not resist stroking.

“Did Juno think of asking her mother to the wedding?”

Sylvia pulled a face: “I think she was frightened of what she might find.”

The last time Juno had tried to contact her mother she had found her in a homeless hostel near Waterloo.

Her top front teeth were missing. She had been living as a vagrant. For a while Juno had cherished the idea that if her mother came to the wedding everything might be healed in the joy of the occasion and the great wasteland of her mother’s paralysed emotions brought to life again. But fearing what state her mother might be in, and what David’s relatives might think, she decided against contacting her.

An unremarkable man with silver hair was edging his way past us. Sylvia caught him by his coat sleeve: “Have you met David’s Uncle

Hymie?” He’s come all the way over from Toronto.”

The man beamed at me through frameless glasses and shook my hand before moving on through the crowd.

Almost immediately I bumped into Sara, an old friend. Her hair was peppered with grey and cut in a short, boyish, style. When she smiled at me her face turned into furrowed leather.

She started to talk to me with great intensity about her twenty-one year old son: “He has no self-confidence. He’s too sensitive. We both suffer from depression. We understand each other perfectly. I was ill a while ago. I could have let myself die, but I never would for his sake. I have to see him through this depression.”

I glanced over at her son, an attractive boy with brown hair in a pony-tail, who was smiling and talking animatedly to a young girl. I looked back at his mother whose eyes were fixed on him.

“Perhaps he should leave home and get away for a while.”

“No.” She hissed vehemently. “He couldn’t cope. He needs me at the moment. He can’t do without me. It would be a disaster. Look. They’re cutting the cake.”

We all pressed forward to one end of the hall. It was too crowded for me to see the actual cake-cutting. Portions of cake were handed out and the musicians in traditional Brazilian dress struck up a samba. David led Juno onto the dance floor. He looked ecstatic. The couple kissed and danced with less and less inhibition. Juno’s body almost wriggled out of the white dress with its stiff bodice. She raised her arms in the air snapping her fingers as her hips marked out the beat. The spectators clapped in time.

David glided with no sense of rhythm but with such a look of adoration on his face that everyone was moved.

Everyone danced. I joined the general jigging throng until I became breathless and went to look for a cup of coffee. The band struck up Hava

Nagila which the musicians had been secretly practising. Juno and David, both seated on light aluminiumframed chairs, were lifted joyously above the heads of the crowd. The music gained speed. Other dancers circled them in the traditional way, stamping and clapping. The chairs were whirled around and then brought close together on high so that the couple could kiss in mid-air to cheers and applause and whoops of delight, as people held up their mobiles to film the sight.

After that the band played and everyone continued chatting, eating wedding cake, making wishes.

Gradually a hush fell on the room.

The band fizzled to a discordant halt.

I thought the silence was for more speeches to be made. Then a stranger whispered in my ear: “Someone has had a heart attack.”

At the far end of the room, through the foliage and bowls of roses, I could see three men, two kneeling and one standing. The tables prevented me seeing the body on the floor. But the shoulders of one of the kneeling men worked up and down as he administered artificial respiration.

Everyone stood still, staring in the direction of the catastrophic event.

Sara sidled up to me and murmured knowingly: “It’s David’s Uncle Hymie. He’s been ill but he was determined to fly over. A corpse at the wedding isn’t exactly a good sign, is it?”

Then came a firm announcement in a male voice: “Would you all leave the room, please.”

The stunned guests started to make their way out. I passed a group of relatives from Toronto. A tall woman in her eighties, who might have been the dead man’s sister, was supported by two younger women as she stood with her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. They formed a motionless Greek chorus as we filed past.

It was freezing outside. We streamed into the nearest pub. Juno appeared October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

29

FICTION

framed in the doorway, the white bridal gown exposing her bare shoulders. David had stayed in the hall with the rest of his family. I stood at the bar with her Aunt Sylvia. Juno rushed over to us: “What do you want to drink?” I asked.

“Whisky,” she gasped. She looked beautiful and dazed.

“You should put something around your shoulders. You’ll freeze to death,” I said. Sylvia threw me a fierce look for mentioning the word ‘death’. She defied anyone to be upset. She lit a cigarette: “Well. What a blessing. He saw his beloved nephew married, he’s eaten and drunk and was surrounded by people he loved. Then he popped off.

Wasn’t that wonderful? There couldn’t be a better way to go. Don’t you think?” She was determined not to let grief enter the discourse.

Juno sipped her whisky. Sudden tears of shock glistened on her lashes as her aunt prattled on. Other guests wandered in looking out of place in kilts and tailcoats and elegant dresses.

Some people had brought the bowls of roses from the hall and placed them on the pub tables.

“You look ravishing,” I said to Juno.

She blinked the tears away and tried to recapture some of the day’s earlier happiness as it slipped away from her.

Conversation rose in volume and then subsided again at the sound of the ambulance siren.

Ten minutes later the bridegroom arrived. David looked around distractedly before he saw his bride and made his way over to us. His long white shirt was outside his trousers.

His bow tie was half undone. Juno took his hand and stroked it with the back of her thumb. She looked directly at him, her eyes full of sympathy and worry. But he turned his head away slightly and gazed over her head as if it were occurring to him for the first time that he might have married a wife who attracted misfortune and loss.  PM 30

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

Books Captain Swing in Sussex and Kent.

Rural Rebellion in 1830, Mike Matthews, The Hastings Press, £7.99 pp 128, (ISBN:1 904109 13 6) ‘I induced the magistrates to put themselves on horseback, each at the head of his own servants and retainers, grooms, huntsmen, gamekeepers, armed with horsewhips, pistols, fowling pieces and what they could get, and to attack in concert, if necessary, or singly, these mobs, disperse them, and take and put in confinement those who could not escape. This was done in a spirited manner, in many instances, and it is astonishing how soon the country was tranquillised, and that in the best way, by the activity and spirit of the gentlemen.’

S

o the hero of Waterloo recalled, in the spirit of Peterloo, how he had hunted down rioting farm labourers in Hampshire during what has been called ‘the last labourers’ revolt’. The rural disturbances this term embraces swept over the greater part of England in 1830-31, though most of the severely affected counties lay south of the Wash and the uplands of Shropshire. The classic accounts of these risings are in The Village Labourer (1911) by J. L. and Barbara Hammond and Captain Swing (1969)

by E.J. Hobsbawm and George Rude.

In focusing on the county where they first flared up, and the one that caught fire soon afterwards, Mike Matthews has brought them to life in a racy and well-researched narrative.

Who was Captain Swing? Well he was perhaps even less of a real person than the legendary King Arthur or the shadowy figure whose name some say was adopted by the factory-machinebreakers of 1811-16 who have given us the insult ‘Luddite’ for every sceptic who questions anything others

proclaim as ‘modernisation’. But whoever first dreamt up the sinisterly evocative name Swing, it came to symbolise the rural resistance and to be used as signature on many of the threatening letters that became one of the principal features of the movement. The others were, again the breaking of machines (especially threshing-machines), the burning of ricks and farm buildings, and ‘riotous’ assembly to present demands for higher wages for labourers and lower tithes for tenant farmers.

Between the end of the Napoleonic wars and 1840, England’s grain farmers endured a prolonged depression, while the pool of landless labourers (the status to which most of the peasants who had not migrated to the towns to find a living had been reduced) grew, firstly through the discharging of soldiers and sailors, and progressively from the accelerating population growth. Hence the labourers’ hostility to the threshingmachines, each of which could make ten or more men redundant during three winter months when less labour was needed for other tasks. The workless were thrown onto parish relief, and the parish Poor Law overseer with whom they had to plead for the extra shilling for themselves and their families to survive became the most hated person in every village. Next to him in disfavour was often the parson, whose tithes pressed hard on the tenant farmers who farmed 90 per cent of the tilled land and made it difficult for them to pay their workers’ wages.

This situation, indeed, made farmer and labourer covert allies against the landowners.

Colonel Brotherton, an officer engaged in quelling riots in the western counties, thought it almost amounted to ‘a conspiracy’. Less sober observers, frightened by revolution abroad, in France and Belgium, and the turbulent campaign for parliamentary reform at home which was to lead to the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, hunted for scapegoats among radical artisans and intellectuals with imputed Jacobin leanings, like William Cobbett and

BOOKS

Henry Hunt, who had spent three years in gaol for his oratory at the 1819 reform rally in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, which provoked the Peterloo Massacre. The countryside was battered into a state of smouldering quiescence by dragoons, mounted gentry, and sentences that ranged from sympathetic to savage, the latter including nineteen executions and the transportation to Australia, for terms extending from seven years to life, of 481 men and women.

The Swing riots, though highly contagious, were much too uncoordinated to warrant terms like ‘revolt’ or ‘rebellion’ and too limited and too astonishingly moderate in their demands for the fears raised in some that they were a prelude to revolution (though they did succeed, for a time at least, in squeezing higher wages out of the masters and in holding back the onset of mechanised farming).

Nevertheless, the Swing story is a most significant episode in ‘a mighty agrarian drama’ (as The Times clearly recognised, in an October 1830 editorial cited by Mike Matthews which alludes explicitly to the relentless advance of agrarian capitalism), and he is right to claim for this chapter in ‘a mighty agrarian drama’ as much attention at least as his been devoted to remembrance of the famous Tolpuddle Martyrs.  Donovan Pedelty, (Author of ‘The Rape of Socialism: How Labour Lost the Millennium’, Prometheus Press, £13.50) Dances in Deep Shadows. Britain’s Clandestine War in Russia 1917-20, Michael Occleshaw, Constable & Robinson, £20.00 pp 360, (ISBN:18452900038) his is a fine book and a great pleasure to read. There have been many books on this period but none so incisive as Occleshaw’s in lifting the lid on the role of spies and intelligence officers in Britain’s

T

efforts, first, to ensure that during the latter stages of the First World War fighting on the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia was not allowed to lapse (which might have allowed the Germans to transfer a number of Divisions to the Western front) and, secondly, in the battle against Bolshevism. Occleshaw is very good at disentangling the hitherto largely secret game that was being played out in Russia and in exposing the longheld myths which have been repeated in mostly unreliable memoirs.

Britain was desperate to keep the war going in the east and embarked on a clandestine war which set a pattern for the rest of the century. Unable and unwilling to provide the numbers of combat troops which would be necessary for any serious war, the government dispatched scores of officers to Russia to train troops and set up sabotage missions. Military Intelligence and MI6 officers loaded down with bags of gold and with the authority to create a banking system to fund entire armies and governments set off on a great adventure. Although the familiar names are here — Sydney Reilly, Robert Bruce Lockhart, George Hill — who mostly turn out to have been liars, Occleshaw also reveals the fascinating activities of lesser known figures who played an equally, if not more important, role.

The great advance in Occleshaw’s account is his recognition that money was central to the whole enterprise. It is one of the great myths of the intelligence world that agents are recruited for ideological, patriotic and idealistic reasons. In fact, the majority of agents are simply bought. The reason there was so little fighting in the recent Afghan War was that the CIA had bought off the regional leaders with bars of gold. When the payments stopped, they returned to growing poppies again to make their money.

Money may buy information but it doesn’t ensure the reliability of the intelligence as the British discovered again and again.

In Russia, MI6 bought and sold banks, shifted millions of roubles and

came close to tying up the entire Russian economy in Britain’s favour.

The one fault of Occleshaw’s detailed research in the archives is that he does not provide enough examples of what that means in today’s money. We are in fact, talking about hundreds of millions of pounds. Almost all of it, as this book makes clear, was wasted and achieved little.

Not only were the British (and the French) involved in these clandestine cash pipelines, the Germans were supporting anyone who would support their cause and keep the Russian government out of the war. If that entailed providing the means by which Lenin and the Bolshevics entered Russia and giving them discreet help once in power, then the Germans were not going to be trapped by any ideological stance. In the intelligence world, my enemy’s enemy is my friend is a standard operating procedure. When that ‘friend’ later turns on you — a process known as ‘blowback’ — no one should be surprised at the turn of events.

Cynicism as an operating procedure inevitably leads to disaster — as we have discovered, again, in Afghanistan.

On this point there is some disagreement. The German support of the Bolshevics fully justifies the description, ‘agents of influence’. The British — onetime masters of this technique — recruited, supported with funds and helped on the way people who they believed might in the future be of use to them. Sometimes this was done directly but more often than not indirectly through third parties. Occasionally, it was never revealed to the target that they had, in fact, been spotted and recruited. The Bolshevics — isolated, fearful and weak — accepted help from anyone who would support their cause. That included at different times the Germans and the British. It is a moot point whether the Bolshevics would have ever achieved power without such intervention.

It is easy to see why the myth of the brilliance of the British intelligence services grew during the early part of October ‘06 | THE TRAWLER

31

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters ‘When the wind blows...’

From Colin Edwards, London Dear Sir: It was a rainy day in Old Town and I needed a coffee. I spotted a copy of The Hastings Trawler in a shop window. The production quality looked good and the list of contents appealed. Although the cover price seemed somewhat north of steep, I bought issue seven to accompany my cups of Americano.

When the rain stopped I made my way to the Huldrick gallery, purely on the strength of their back cover advertisement. I spent more on prints than I had intended, had an enjoyable chat with the proprietor and picked up three back issues of your magazine which were still on sale [but at full cover price!]

That evening I read every page of each issue. Your historical articles and profiles of famous Hastings personalities added to the enjoyment of my visit and I figured that you were almost doing a great service for tourism in your delightful resort.

It is the ‘almost’ that prevented me reaching for my cheque book and sending you a subscription.

Although I am not an avid short story reader, I found your fiction pages Reviews (continued)

the twentieth century and why the Bolshevics believed they were behind everything that went wrong with their revolution.

Occleshaw’s extensive research reveals that British intelligence efforts were on a far great scale than any of the previous accounts have suggested. This was the first great intelligence war. Lacking real power, armies and funds, which the Americans had in abundance, Britain attempted to shore up its Great Power image by launching clandestine wars. This was a policy 32

THE TRAWLER|October ‘06

from Pauline Melville enjoyable. She is clearly a talented author but, why on earth does she feel the need to use obscenities which seemed to miss your editorial pencil? We do not use the ‘f word’ in our family and certainly do not expect it to appear in an otherwise good magazine. Its use adds nothing to her credibility or to the narrative.

That however, is a minor niggle compared with the three page lead in each issue which appears to be a soap box for your contributor ‘TN’. His bitter and negative rants completely negate any ambassadorial role of the rest of the publication.

Sure, an independent, local publication can be critical but these miserable and dire notes would be better in the local papers [if at all]?

Could ‘TN’ be the original ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’, who has retired to Hastings? His pages are reminiscent of Private Eye, but without the wit.

They are like the more lurid tabloid columnists, but without their talent and skill.

Dirty washing is best aired in private and certainly not in the pages of a magazine that is bought by visitors. If ‘TN’ dislikes so much about Hastings, then why does he still live there?

I am very favourably impressed with the town and especially the variety of establishments in Old Town.

Compared with many Sussex and Kent resorts, Hastings has a lot going for it. Please continue to celebrate and appreciate all that is good. which had, and continues to have, grave consequences. Occleshaw concludes: ‘The British Intelligence Services can be seen to have influenced and sometimes even led the government. That reflects a dubious development in the modern state: the influence of expert and specialist on leaders who are often well out of their depth when facing foreign policy and military problems.’ Iraq immediately springs to mind.

Concise, easily to follow and of interest to both the specialist and the

Whenever work brings me your way I shall certainly buy your current issue.

Please edit ‘TN’ severely – even one page of his vitriol would be too much for this visitor. You might then consider using the spare space to offer an alternative positive view?

Colin Edwards Editor replies: We are sad to report that not only has our Ace cub reporter TN left the building, he’s also left Hastings — and the country. No, he’s not lying in a shallow grave somewhere, although dark forces out there may have wished for that — and were greatly relieved when they heard he had gone. In fact, Ted has gone to spread the word (I think that’s what he said) in the ‘Land of the Free, but as observant readers will have already noticed, having settled in to his new home he is now contributing a regular ‘Letter from America’ (or should that be from the ‘Heart of the Beast’), but we are still on the lookout for local-grown, vitriolic, ‘bitter and negative’ whistleblowers, so please get in touch — The Trawler need you! As for our writers’ use of sweary words, what can I say other than this is not the Ladies’ Home Journal. 

general reader, Dances in Deep Shadows (not a good title) is a jolly good read which both illuminates and deepens our knowledge of British Intelligence history. But it is also more than just history because it also shows how little intelligence work changes over the decades. The brave but mostly deluded operatives described here can still be found in Afghanistan and the Middle East involved in the same kind of clandestine wars.  Stephen Dorril (Author of MI6: Ffity years of Special Operationss, Fourth Estate, £12.95)