Robert nelson road at my door final

The Road at My Door

Writing on the Wall, Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre 4, Princes Road, Liverpool L8 1TH Published by Writing on the Wall 2015 Š Remains with Robert Nelson Design and layout by Rosa Murdoch Edited by Colin Watts ISBN: 978-1-910580-05-9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

0151 703 0020 info@writingonthewall.org.uk www.writingonthewall.org.uk

Memoir by Robert Nelson

For Shirley

Acknowledgements and Introduction I wish to acknowledge the advice given to me by my youngest daughter Lucy in 2003. She had this mad idea that going to university would bring me out of the deep depression that surrounded me following the death of my wife in 2000. She was right. This must count as a major building block in enabling me to write this book. The help and assistance offered to me while completing my degree is, of course, contained in the book.

As the document started to grow the interest from others in my progress varied between zero and daily enquiries.

Family and friends can be relied on to keep you at it. At last I’ve finished it and wish to say thank you to one and all, particularly my family for whom I have written this story.

This is from my very first memory, a true and honest account of the events and situations between 1937 and 2008 that shaped my life. I have also included some observations on social history, which we ignore at our peril. Today’s world of button-pushing and image-watching does worry me.

Communication speeding up, as conversation declines – not a healthy formula.

The majority of people who played a leading role in my journey are of course in the book. This story does, however, give me the opportunity to acknowledge those who in various important ways helped me at pivotal times in my life with their enthusiastic support. Steve Cave, Jeff Green, Phil Lloyd, John McDonald, Tom McQueen, and Hugh Rimmer all played crucial roles in setting up the Liverpool District Office from scratch in 1989. They were young men, new to the job, and I did push them to the limit. Also the office staff, all local people, ably led by Thelma Green and of course Pauline Jackson,

inventor of the ‘Barclay Card Shuffle’.

We argued passionately and disingenuously at times; it was all a bit over the top (the charter mark springs to mind). But out of this came an excellent group of people who have, with few exceptions, gone on to fill important jobs within the organisation.

I also wish to thank various people who helped me throughout my life and career: John Low and Brigadier Ridley from my time in the Yorkshire Traffic Area, as I struggled to settle into a new job; Ken Horner, from my Stanmore days, who made me think; Fred Whalley and Eric Dunn from my time in the North West Traffic Area. Then on to Bob Tatchel, Tony Thompson and Julian David who kept me in check in Bristol. John Mervyn Pugh in Birmingham and last, but not least, Ron Oliver, our leader, who kept me on the right track.

Just! All of them were hard working people who knew how to manage; I tried to follow their example.

After my wife’s Illness and untimely death in 2000 I was once again supported by family and friends. I found myself very depressed with no more to give, at the lowest point of my life after five years of nursing her at home. A phone call from Gordon Herd, who had worked for me in Liverpool and Wrexham, inviting me to join a walking group, run through the Chester University of the Third Age (U3A) completely changed my life. It was a turning point and I began to find a new social life with the help of Beryl Osbourne to whom I owe a great deal.

My final vote of thanks, and it’s a big one, goes to Mike McClellan at Techknack, who got me on to one of his excellent computer courses. This enabled me to seize the moment and attack the laptop. Putting the first words in via the keyboard

was a great moment for me. Mike has been with me every step of the way and I’m mindful of his help.

My greatest debt is recognised and recorded in the book’s dedication.

Contents Chapter 1 War and Grandparents

1

Chapter 2 Junior School Years

13

Chapter 3 Grammar School

31

Chapter 4 Making My Way

41

Chapter 5 Watson’s and the Great Awakening

57

Chapter 6 Marriage in the Shadow of the Army

69

Chapter 7 Crosville Motor Services

83

Chapter 8 I Join the Ministry

91

Chapter 9 Sheffield and Stanmore

97

Chapter 10 Home to Turmoil and Change

111

Chapter 11 Liverpool

125

Chapter 12 Scotland

135

Chapter 13 Manchester

151

Chapter 14 Hard Times

159

Chapter 15 The Liverpool District Office

165

Chapter 16 Cambridge, Birmingham and Cardiff

173

Chapter 17 Manchester Wilderness

181

Chapter 18 Hillsborough

187

Chapter 19 Heartbreak

193

Chapter 20 Life Goes On

201

Chapter 1 War and Grandparents My life began in 1937, July to be accurate, on the 14th day. I entered this world at five minutes past eight in the morning, to the great relief of my mother and delight of my dad, tipping the scales at 10 pounds 10 ounces. I was born at home, 16 Brimstage Street, just behind the children’s hospital in Birkenhead. The world I was born into was one in which Britain still held some sway, though the Great War, 1914-18, had seen us lose our position as the most powerful nation in the world to the United States. We did, however, still have the Commonwealth. But this of course was going on well above my small head, though these events were to change the world I grew up in and made an impact upon me as I made my way through life.

Mum and Dad were very happy in their small terraced house. My dad was coming to the end of his career as a professional boxer; just prior to my birth he had put his very hard-earned money into a butchers’ shop. Whilst being a very good boxer, he was unfortunately a very bad business man and it all ended in tears. He lost everything except the house, which was rented. The future looked rather grim; however the events referred to above came to our rescue. Britain was once again preparing for war, albeit against a background of appeasement. Shipbuilding was very much on the national agenda and Birkenhead had an excellent shipbuilding facility in Cammell Lairds, who were taking men on. Furthermore my grandfather, who was a skilled cabinet-maker, worked there and was able to help Dad get a job. The bad news was, Dad, being the man he was, insisted on living as close to his job as possible and placed his nearest and dearest directly under 1

Hitler’s flight path to Lairds’ shipyard. This astute move on Dad’s part, which gave him perhaps an extra half hour in bed each day, resulted in the small, happy Nelson family being bombed out three times in eighteen months. The third time did it for Mum. On the other hand I was having the time of my life; all I remember is the excitement and noise.

My first memory I can recall captures this period vividly. I remember being lifted out of the Anderson Shelter behind our house; suddenly a bright light appeared as we were dug out of the rubble, which had been the house; it had taken a direct hit and collapsed onto the shelter. Then a man appeared and I was lifted up into his outstretched arms. He placed me down on the remains of the house and I looked around in amazement. ‘Mam the house has gone!’ I yelled. And so it had.

Mum was helped out and looking around, burst into tears.

Once she had composed herself we began looking through the rubble for possessions. Dad was not there, he was fire watching at the shipyard. This was a stroke of luck in that if he had not been at work he would have been killed. He never got out of bed when the air raid warning sounded, and this caused all kinds of trouble between him and Mum. Needless to say, this incident cured him. How people dealt with all of this was quite remarkable as I look back on it; they simply just got on with it. We ended up going to stay with Mum’s sister in Hoylake as a temporary measure.

Having now lost everything they possessed, Mum and Dad made a brave decision. They took me to North Wales where Mum came from, and left me with my grandparents. They then returned to Merseyside and waited until it was safe enough to bring me back. It was much easier to move about without having to think about a three year old all the time.

Dad continued to work in the shipyard, doing his bit in 2

keeping Hitler at bay, along with his fire-watching exploits which at times tended to get out of hand.

One incident in particular worth recording is when he took two Russian seamen into captivity, having mistaken them for Germans, one foreign language being as good as the next to him. The fact that they happened to be the captain and his first mate did not help the situation. Indeed, it may well be that the Cold War could be traced back to this incident. But that’s another story. Mum also continued to work as a cook, an occupation she had filled at Mostyn Hall, where she had worked and learnt how to cook before the war, for Lord Mostyn no less: ‘in service’ sounded more like servitude.

Meanwhile I began to adjust to my new surroundings. The biggest change I was faced with was the move from an urban to a rural environment. It was such a different way of life and to begin with I did miss the noise and nightly firework display.

I soon adjusted with the help and love I found in this small, but warm in every sense of the word, home. My grandparents who were in their sixties had raised a large family of nine, four girls and five boys. They now lived with just two of the girls.

Three of the boys had been called up; two were in what was known as reserved occupations.

My mum had of course left home with a younger sister, my aunt Ruth, and so I now joined my grandparents and two aunties. This was the beginning of a new life for me and as I look back, it becomes clear to me that this was the point at which I began to grow into the person I eventually became. I was still only five years old but, due to circumstances beyond my control, here I was in a new situation in which I had to establish myself. It soon became abundantly clear that whilst I was loved and cared for, I would have to pull my weight.

Granddad introduced me to the garden, his domain! It came 3

as quite a surprise to me that vegetables actually grew in the ground. It now became one of my jobs to gather them and weed the beds, all under his direction. I then followed whatever had been gathered into the house where my task here was to peel what I had picked, this time, under the eagle eye of Grandmother. I sat opposite her in front of the big open range on which every meal was cooked. Nothing was missed or wasted. She then took over, explaining to me where to place various items in the oven or into pans of water, which she then swung out over the big fire that never appeared to go out.

I loved every minute of the wonderful time I spent with both of them. They made me feel so important, referring to my skills when we all sat around the table at meal times, saying what a great help I had become. This was such a valuable lesson to me on how to treat people; they were of course spoiling me, but educating me at the same time. I still love to cook, always with these memories in the back of my mind.

Living in this idyllic rural principality made me aware of the seasons to a far greater extent, surrounded as we were by wonderful countryside. My granddad used to walk me for what seemed to me miles and miles. He walked the legs off me, pointing out the various trees, shrubs, mountains and hills with such great pride as only a true Welshman can. It was as if he owned it all and indeed at that tender age I began to believe he did. I now of course believe he should have. He was a giant to me in every way, well over six feet tall and with an intellect to match, which he never had the chance to display.

Opportunity was indeed a privilege in those days, afforded to the few.

4

He had in 1934 been most fortunate to survive the night shift at Gresford Colliery. This was the fateful night of 22nd September, when an explosion, recorded at 2.08 am, took the life of 266 men and boys working in the Dennis Main shaft.

Only eleven bodies were recovered, the rest being sealed in and remain there to this day. A small group of men did make it through the fire and poisoned gas. A far larger group, working in the adjacent shaft, were brought out via another route, avoiding being trapped behind the fire which quickly spread. They too made it to the surface. This group contained my granddad. He never went down the mine again.

When I arrived in Wales to avoid the Liverpool Blitz, at its height in May/June 1941, he was still out of any regular work, which is why he was able to spend so much time with me.

Grandma always said my arrival had a very positive effect on his mental health and wellbeing. The community we lived in was very close-knit; miners looked after each other, it’s a very important element of their culture and a feature I was aware of even at my tender age of four.

Their hobbies took the form of music, poetry, walking or looking after racing pigeons. These cost nothing and tended to be artistic, in direct contrast to their work which was brutal. My granddad played the euphonium in the pit brassband, continuing to play after he had turned his back on the pit. It was this he filled with vegetables as he made his way home after the band had been playing in the surrounding villages. Vegetable soup was always on the menu.

As I now look back I’m amazed at how quickly I adjusted to my new surroundings, and whilst I did miss my mum, my new responsibilities, together with the opportunities that went with them, kept me occupied, mentally and physically. Also I was in a safe place and knew it.

5

When Mum had left me, she was very upset and had told me that she had to go back to Liverpool to work in a factory making tanks for the war. She told me to listen in to the wireless each day, to a programme called Workers’ Playtime.

This was a well-known programme that was broadcast from various factories at midday, playing popular songs. The workers also took part, sending messages to loved ones from whom they had been parted due to the war. Each day without fail my granddad would tune in, telling me that Mum would come on and give me a message letting me know that she missed me, etc, etc. It never happened. When Mum did eventually return to take me back I ran down the path to greet her, shouting out that she had not been on the wireless to me and that I had listened to all the messages given out. She clearly did not know what I was talking about. Another valuable lesson for me; everybody tells lies. Granddad was nowhere to be found. So here we have my grandparents, Irish and Welsh. This, I believe, makes me a Celt, which is just as well since I feel like one and think like one. I’m very much at home either in Ireland or in Wales. I can relate and converse with the people with ease. An important point that comes out of this to me is how very fortunate it is to have known, had the opportunity to live with and talk with your grandparents.

My view on this is that it gives you a far better understanding of who you are. Many people lack this knowledge and I feel most fortunate to have had this experience.

My one deep regret is of course that I was never encouraged to speak the language. In fact during my time in Wales, the Welsh language was not spoken in schools, and even though my grandparents spoke Welsh they believed that they were helping me by not teaching me their native tongue.

I would return to my grandma’s house in Wales many times, 6

over the years. I always felt at home there and belonged. It was indeed a special place to me and illustrates the importance and good fortune I had in spending this time with them. I’m convinced that this is a big help to any young child, giving them a real understanding of who they are as well as the structure and personality of the family to whom they belong. Knowing your grandparents is a big help as you start to develop as a child.

7

Welsh Grandparents

8

Irish Grandparents

9

Mum and Dad

10

Mum and I, 1940

11

12

Chapter 2 Junior School Years The next phase of my childhood and development would take place back in Merseyside, where I returned to with my mum.

Having not seen her for well over a year, even at my tender age, I could see that she had put on some weight. I was now six and starting to notice things. We returned to live with my dad’s mum and dad, who lived close to Claughton village in Birkenhead. They were very different people from my Welsh grandparents. As I now look back on it, it appears so obvious, but at the time to my young mind they were just two more people that had entered my life. This time I had my mum with me, which tended to protect me from the full impact of the change. This granddad was a quiet man, much smaller than his Welsh counterpart; also he had what I now know to be a ‘presence’, good at explaining things to me or anyone else for that matter. He was very clever with his hands and always well dressed. Most of these qualities he needed to deal with my Irish grandmother, who was by far the most complex of grandparents to deal with or understand at my tender age.

Dynamic is the word that springs to mind, but a word not in my vocabulary then. I know this is where I get my energy from; she was never still and you could hear her wherever she was.

We did not stay very long in Sumner Road. My mum, with the valuable help of Grandma who had contacts everywhere, was hot on the trail of a house that was going in the north end of Birkenhead and had been given the key to go and view the property. Off we went. I can still remember walking along Hoylake Road with Mum and Grandma, who kept on saying ‘I do hope it’s the end house, Margaret.’ And when we got there 13

it was. Both Mum and Grandma agreed that this was the house and so it turned out to be. Number 228 Goodwin Avenue became our home for the next five years, at the regal cost of 10 shillings and 6 pence (10s 6d) rent per week. Then, as February approached in 1945, I was packed off again to Sumner Road and Mum was rushed into Grange Mount maternity home. She was preparing to present us with twins: a boy, Graham, and a girl, Sandra, born ten minutes prior to her brother. A month later I returned to Goodwin Avenue, having walked back home with my auntie Silvia, Dad’s youngest sister, but only four years older than me. The babies were both asleep, each one lying inside deep cupboard drawers. I remember looking at them, then turning to mum asked very seriously: ‘Why did you get two?’ This provoked a great deal of laughter, but boy I was serious. My life was about to enter yet another phase and something was telling me that things were going to be somewhat different from hereon in.

The arrival of Sandra and Graham changed everything in our life. Least affected was Dad. He continued to rise early and go to work, returning whenever he finished, which was usually late. Mum really did have her hands full trying to keep up with the basics. This left me somewhat perplexed. Where did I fit in? I had to resolve this situation. When I suggested sending them back she did not reply, except to give me a funny look. I had of course reached an impasse, but did not know it. We soldiered on. This state of affairs carried on for a while until, as I left to go to school one morning, I noticed that Mum was crying. On my way to school I made my mind up to call at Mrs Povell’s house in School Lane. Bidston was still very much a village then (1945) and I knew her well. I knocked on her door and told her that I thought my mum needed some help. She told me I was a good boy and ran off 14

across the field. I carried on to school. Returning home from school that afternoon it was clear to me that I had done the right thing, Mum had lost the wild look in her eyes; the house was quiet and had some order about it. Mrs Povell continued to arrive every morning, which was an enormous help to my mum. I don’t know how we would have managed without her, and my family owe her so much.

I also found myself in her debt, as she had told my teachers and I became something of a hero. The school was a real village school with just two classes, infants and ‘big ones’ as they were called – twenty-eight children and two teachers.

You moved up after your eighth birthday. Before I approached this milestone I found myself involved in a road traffic accident which cost me my hero status. It taught me that fame and fortune are indeed transient, a valuable lesson to learn at a tender age.

The incident happened one Saturday when I was out with a gang of boys walking along the Hoylake Road. We had just reached the bus stop at Hurrell Road, when we became aware of a fight going on across from us in the rhododendron gardens known to all as The Rods. My dog Rex actually saved me from serious injury. I was the first to run across, in front of the stationary bus (no. 24), when I noticed my dog turn very sharply to his left. Looking up, I saw a big black motor car coming straight for me. I too turned, just as the car hit me.

The front wing came into contact with my bottom and I sailed into the air, over the hedge and rolled right down the front garden of someone’s house. It was all over in a split second.

The car screeched to a halt, the driver got out and ran to where I had come to rest. Under the circumstances he was very nice about it, but clearly shaken. Someone had rung the police and I had been identified as ‘the lad with the dog who 15

ran out and was run over’. Later that week the police visited our school. A new venture run by the police had been instigated to make school children more aware of the danger of road traffic, which had begun to increase as the war came to an end and petrol became available to the private motorist again. During the war years vehicles had almost disappeared from our roads with exception of buses and military vehicles.

Private cars were few; it was doctors and other people with access to coupons who were able to run them. This resulted in a lack of awareness. I was named and shamed as having been in a road traffic accident, which prevented our school from competing for the road safety award. Clearly it was a very good idea to have these awards, to begin to rebuild awareness by taking the message into schools. Unfortunately I got the message the hard way. It could have been much worse, but I did not see that at the time.

Our head teacher retired and was replaced by a Miss Cushing, who was to change my life at a most important time.

She ended each day by reading to the whole class. It was a revelation, in that it introduced me to real books. Her choice of reading matter was excellent; my horizon and imagination were given such an awakening and I’ve been reading ever since. In addition we were all given a small patch of the border that surrounded the playground. As if by magic a flower garden appeared in which we all had a real interest. It was a wonderful idea. My progress at school must have been stimulated by these activities and circumstances were about to add another string to my bow.

The school, to give it its full title, the Church of England Bidston Village School, was linked to St Oswald’s Church located at the top of School Lane in the centre of the village.

The vicar, Rev Thomas, visited our school each week. He was 16

a delightful man with a large family and a large, very happy wife. They lived in a big house half way down School Lane.

Mum made sure that I attended church each week and as I was now approaching the age of confirmation, it resulted in me attending three times each Sunday. It was during this period that Rev Thomas asked me if I would like to attend at choir practice one Friday evening, where he would listen to my voice with a view to me joining the choir. The following Friday, after being scrubbed by Mum, I attended choir practice listening in awe, hoping that I would be invited to join. Mr Rowlands, the choir master, auditioned me after they had finished. All was well; I passed and was given my uniform.

As well as the church services each week, there were weddings and funerals for which we were paid real money.

My helping out at the farm was always rewarded with goods, which went into the house-keeping, but this was the real thing. There was also a trip out to Blackpool each year, all paid for out of the choir fund. I could hardly wait for this, since my great passion in life was football. Blackpool in those days was a top team, playing in the first division. I knew all the teams and players and they had two of the very best in Stan Matthews and Stan Mortenson. I could not wait to go to Blackpool. At long last the day arrived; we travelled on a fine coach which was a new experience for me. I can even remember the coach; it was a Leyland fitted with a Duple body, very posh indeed. We arrived and were told to get back to the parking area no later than 5.30 pm. My first port of call was into a gift shop where I bought Mum a small but very pretty vase. I then headed for Bloomfield Road, home of Blackpool FC – heaven, which considering I was on a church outing is fair comment. This was my first real football match and a wonderful experience which I never forgot. Time simply 17

flew past, and all too soon it was time to find the bus. I just made it. We made our way back to the bus garage, Bells of Moreton, which was about a mile away from the church. I walked home and gave mum my small gift. She loved it and immediately put it on display. I’ve got the vase now, in fact.

The only thing I wanted when Mum and Dad had passed away was this small vase. I see it every day and think about that day sixty-eight years ago. On the journey home some of the other boys asked me where I had been. Had I been on this ride or seen various things? When I told them I’d been to a football match by myself it caused quite a commotion. Mr Rowlands was consulted and did not appear to be very happy. However my salvation came in the form of Rev Thomas who was impressed, as he put it ‘with my independence’. I did not understand what he was getting at, but kept my head down; his intervention had taken the topic of conversation away from my visit to the football match.

My life continued around school, church, choir, and helping out at the farm. I was still puzzled by how to fit in at home; as my new siblings grew they demanded even more attention and got it. What I, or anyone else for that matter, did not realise at the time, was that circumstances had given me the opportunity to go down this road of independence. A good example of this came my way just after my ninth birthday.

One of the Povell brothers who ran the farm told me that there was a Saturday job going at a greengrocer’s in Claughton village, which was of course where my grandmother lived. She was bound to know him, so I went to see her. This was a regular visit; each Friday evening mum would send me to Mrs Maine who lived near Grandma. She owned a caravan at Talacre on the Welsh coast, which she hired out to friends. Mum was planning a holiday for us and 18

paying Mrs Maine half a crown each week. I always went to visit Grandma after paying Mrs Maine and took the opportunity of telling her about the job at the greengrocers.

She was all for it and told me to meet her at the shop the following morning. Once Grandma entered the fray, getting the job became a formality and so next morning at 8.30 I became an order boy with my very own bike. My territory covered Bidston Road, where most of the rich people lived in those days. My wage was 7/6d per week and the tips I got on top of this brought my net total to 10 shillings a week. This covered the rent. The fact that I had been allowed to fend for myself had encouraged me to become what is now called proactive at an early age and it stayed with me all my life. I can see now that the arrival of my brother and sister were a real blessing in disguise, since my imagination and freedom to do things were far greater than they would have been had I remained an only child.

My life had now settled into a routine and I was bringing money in that helped Mum. It was round this time that my dad changed his job and went to work for what was the best shipping company in Liverpool, Alfred Holt and Company, or the Blue Funnel Line as they were known. They covered the Far East and gave rise to a very well-known expression on Merseyside: ‘the China boat’s in’, which had a double meaning, one of which is obvious, that there was a Blue Funnel boat in port. The other meaning referred to anyone who wore their trousers too short like all the Chinese crew did. My dad, whilst working on the docks, picked up all the strange sayings that were used. The men who worked on the waterfront were a very tight-knit group, having their own unique humour and language. To me, at my age, it was a brief insight into another world. It was this thirst for knowledge 19

and my eagerness to help which got me into trouble on occasions, but as the saying goes, sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

I was now nine, and in the older group at school, when one day walking through the cloak-room I saw our two teachers deep in conversation. The discussion was about the small towels set out next to every wash basin. They were in a very poor state and needed replacing. It was evident to me that the teachers had been told that due to the general shortages at that time no replacements were available. Without a moment’s hesitation I stepped into the breach. ‘My dad can get you some towels,’ I volunteered. Glances were exchanged and I was invited into the office where Miss Cushing wrote a short note, placed it in an envelope and then sealed it. ‘Give this to your mother when you get home tonight Bobby.’ I could hardly wait to get home that night after solving the problem of the replacement towels. Mum’s reaction was not what I had expected, to say the least. I was sent to bed with no tea and the dreaded words: ‘Wait until your dad comes in.’

With fate hanging in the balance, providence in the form of an emergency at Dad’s work saved the day. He had to work the nightshift so that a ship could sail on the morning tide. Mum took me to school next morning. She was hopeless in this sort of situation, unable to find the words she needed. Miss Cushing was very nice about it all, asking Mum to forget about the incident and that it was a misunderstanding. A valuable lesson for me and as Dad put it some weeks later when it was safe to tell him: ‘Keep your mouth shut if you don’t know what you are talking about.’

Having now reached the ripe old age of nine with an interesting life, I began to enjoy my school work more than I had ever done. One big advantage of our small school was the 20

lack of distraction and now that Miss Cushing had introduced me to literature I was switched on, as the saying goes. It was 1946 and unknown to me a new Education Act was in place that saw the introduction of grammar schools. The 11 plus was the stepping stone to this new system. Miss Cushing drew my attention to this, stressing that it was a real opportunity.

She asked my mum to come to the school, and spent some time explaining how important it was. I do owe this lady a great deal, as I now reflect on that time. It was all down to her interest and the effort she put into her role as head teacher, and I should point out that it was not only me that she made aware of the opportunities that lay before us, thanks to this legislation introduced by Clement Attlee’s new Labour government.

There were now two years in which to prepare for the 11 plus exams. However they did not rate very highly in my dayto-day life. It’s not like that when you are nine; time does appear to be endless. The important point was that Miss Cushing had made me aware and I had taken this awareness on board.

Looking back at this period, the thing that stands out is that I made my first visit to Anfield to see Liverpool play. This was the first full season after the war, players were returning and all the teams were getting back to being able to play with their best players. As ever great rivalry existed between the two big Liverpool sides. All my family supported Everton; I went for Liverpool and that was due to one man, Billy Liddell. He was outstanding and by far their best player. At that time in the North End most of the lads who could afford to follow the football went every week, regardless of their loyalties. An important point to remember is that the only way you could see these players was by going to the match, hence the high 21

attendance and huge crowds. This was the working man’s game in all its glory, and the very reason my mum always stopped me from going. But I now had my Blackpool experience and the vase to barter with, and at long last she agreed to let me go. I had my eye on the home game against Middlesbrough. They had an inside forward called Wilf Mannion, who also played for England, and I wanted to see him play. At last, the great day arrived and off we all went on the bus to Woodside, then across the river on the ferry, then on the bus to the ground. We were only allowed to use the boys’ pen, situated in the far right hand corner of the Kop in those days. The match was over all too quickly; Liverpool won, but Mannion was sublime. I will never forget him ‘selling a dummy’ and moving the whole defence the wrong way, and half the crowd. What a day for a young boy of nine! It’s amazing to think that it was 67 years ago, yet the events of that day are so clear in my mind. I did not go to many games because of my Saturday job, but as the years rolled on my good fortune enabled me to watch Liverpool play most of their most important games. This will become clear as my story unfolds.

The next two years were all about adjusting to the war ending and a new way of life for a great number of people, as the men came back from all over the world. Rationing was still in place; all food was rationed along with clothes and building materials. There were no sweets or what my Irish grandma called ‘fancy food’ and you had to know someone who knew someone to get most things. Fortunately she did, so we kept well in with her. Mum had to take the babies each week to the clinic near Birkenhead Park, where they were examined and had their weight checked. She had to pass Grandma’s house so always called in on the way home. The twin pram was 22

enormous and had a false bottom in which Grandma used to pack all kinds of things that you could not find in the shops.

Mum told me in very plain words that I must not mention any thing about this at school and when I asked where it came from Mum always said ‘under the counter’ but never looked me in the eye. Gradually things started to get better and on reflection most people will now agree that we had a far healthier diet during that period. We ate fresh locally-grown food and shopped every day, and I still believe there is a lot to be said for it. There were not many fat children in those days, and most households were very evenly matched, i.e. there was no need to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. In short, life was much less complicated. I can’t remember ever hearing the word stress. Lads played football in the winter and cricket in the summer; most of us kept scrap-books in which we pasted newspaper cuttings of the leading sports personalities. Girls did not really exist; although Mavis Sutton who lived in School Lane fascinated me; she had given me my very first biology lesson behind the piano in the school hall, but it never led to anything. I always felt in her debt and we developed a great mutual respect for each other. The winter of 1947 was my next big memory.

This was the winter that brought the country to a standstill and it appeared to last forever. Even going to school was difficult, as well as dangerous, but we managed until the coal ran out. My dad got all the men together and it was decided that they would all work as a group and put their efforts into providing their families with fuel. The heavy tools needed were brought from the work places, mainly Lairds: ropes, saws, axes and some heavy trolleys on which to place the larger trees. They set off heading for The Rods which was full of trees. They looked like a picture from a Russian play of the 23

peasants working the land. My dad leading the way, we, that is, the lads, were following at a safe distance. All went well for a few hours; trees were cut down and neatly stacked, hot tea appeared and was distributed around the men. Then from nowhere a police constable joined us, then another officer who had three stripes on his jacket. He opened the proceedings by asking: ‘Whose idea was this then?’ but it sounded a bit like ‘Hello! Hello! Hello!’ Anyway, Dad was up for it and proceeded to explain the facts of life to the custodian of law and order. An impasse had been reached. Then the Sergeant uttered the words I was to hear on many occasions ‘Are you Bob Nelson the boxer?’ ‘Yes,’ replied my dad. ‘Well you had better get all this mess cleared up and get rid of all this wood.’ Considering the situation this sounded like a good idea, but don’t forget the police had no radio sets then and I think the sergeant made a wise decision. All the wood was taken back to the avenues and it filled a gap where two houses had stood prior to being flattened in the bombing. We all had a good fire going that night and the wood lasted until the coal started to get through, with the occasional top- up.

Two weeks later I fell ill and it turned out to be yellow jaundice brought on by getting so very cold that day. I was off school for about three weeks and enjoyed every minute of it.

The year moved on and we eventually began to see signs of spring in the fields and hedgerows. Work on the farm began to increase after the long hard winter months and it was time for the cattle to go back into the fields, always an event worth seeing as they filled the pastures after being confined for so long. The big barn was almost empty of hay that had fed the cattle all winter. My attention moved to the huge loft above, where the barn owls made their nests; this was a time of great activity as they prepared for the arrival of their young. I was 24

fascinated watching them hunting; they concentrated on the railway sidings, teeming with mice that kept their young well fed until it was time for them to leave the nest and fend for their own needs.

Summer arrived and it was time to think about our holiday at Mrs Maine’s caravan in North Wales. Mum had arranged to go with one of her friends, Mrs McKeown, who lived on the Hoylake Road. She was married to a man named Pat, who had a butcher’s stall in Birkenhead market. They had two children, Audrey and Ian. My dad and Pat were unable to take the time off from work, which meant that Mum and Mrs Mckeown, together with five children, needed to be transported to Talacre in North Wales. An arrangement had been made with the man who ran the newsagents’ shop on Hoylake Road to take us there in his car. I was excited by this, never having been on a car journey before. The car was a fourseater saloon, a Vauxhall as I recall, and it was asking a lot from it to absorb five children, two adults, and their holiday luggage.

The morning of our departure arrived and I could hardly believe what happened. Mrs Mckeown’s father had decided to join us. He was well known in the area as a councillor, but the real problem was that he was grossly overweight and had claimed the front seat next to the driver. How we all got in I’ll never know, but we did, with the luggage on the roof. We arrived and the sleeping arrangements were sorted out. This completed, the holiday started. The sun shone and we had a great time in the sand hills and the sea.

All went well until the Wednesday evening, when the councillor did not appear for his dinner. A search was organised and questions asked, all to no avail; he was missing, and it was going dark. Mrs Mckeown and Mum put us all to 25

bed and I could hear them talking. Mrs Mckeown was arranging the councillor’s funeral and I overheard her saying to my mum: ‘I’ll get the Co-op to do the funeral Margaret,’ when out of the night we heard a voice in distress. ‘Winnie,’ it called, ‘help me, I’m lost.’ Winnie was Mrs Mckeown’s first name. She rushed out with Mum; I was dispatched to fetch water. Apparently he had gone for a stroll and become confused, then got lost, easy to do on a caravan site in the dark. After much tea and sympathy, he went to bed and slept like a baby, but was confined to a set route by Winnie next day.

Holidays never seemed to last very long, and before we knew it, we were back at school. The school garden was looking very colourful. Clearly someone had been keeping an eye on the weeds during the holidays. Without warning the daylight hours began to grow shorter; winter was on the way.

The school was heated by two open coal fires, looked after by the caretaker who had them lit before we arrived each day.

They certainly kept the two class-rooms warm and the larger hall which had a screen across. This screen could be pulled back, enabling all the children to come together for assembly and whenever the need arose for the whole school to be addressed. The caretaker also looked after the maintenance and lived in a stone house attached to the school. His wife did all the cleaning, and they were related to Mrs Povell, who had come to my mum’s rescue when my brother and sister were driving her up the wall. I knew them from church; they were a very nice couple called Henry and Audrey. He also worked as a mechanic, in a garage in Birkenhead, and I mention this, as I would come into contact with him a few years later in my teens. His brother also lived with them; he had lost part of his left arm due to an accident with a shot gun. We were told he 26

was called Lew, and he kept rather aloof. It may well be that this was just the impression we got, and that he was rather inhibited by his disability. Some years later I found out that he was employed by Lord Leverhulme’s estate, which owned all the farms, as the estate manager. The house and school are still there, with their overgrown gardens. The farms have long ceased to work, with the village now by-passed and surrounded by housing estates. All very sad when I think of how it used to be. The church is still there and used, also the farm buildings and School Lane, but very different to how I remember it in the war years.

At the bottom end of School Lane the large detached Victorian houses finish, about two hundred yards from the railway station, and on this farm land there were gun emplacements, built to try and prevent the German air force from bombing the Liverpool dockland. As the tide of the war turned they were no longer needed and were replaced by a large military camp, in which were housed hundreds of American troops, arriving in Liverpool as the build up to the Normandy invasion started. We could hardly believe our luck; the sweet shortage was solved overnight. Talk about ‘The Yanks are coming’. They were all shapes, sizes, and colours, and very brash. The camp was of course guarded day and night, so we gave it a wide berth. Also my dad had told me to stay away from it and I did, until one day I found myself inside.

Half way down the lane on the left hand side, there were some stables used by a man named Mr Bleasdale. He kept his horses there. He ran a mobile greengrocer’s shop, using a horse and cart from his house in Mason Avenue. I was spending a lot of time in and around School Lane and got to know him. He took a liking to me and let me help him with his horses. It was much easier for me to climb up into the loft 27

above and fill the hay racks with the horse food. Once I’d mastered this, he began to let me mix the bran and oats and then showed me how to move the horse over in the stall in order to put the feed into the food trough, from which the horse would then eat. The one exception was the black stallion in the end stall, which he instructed me to keep well clear of, since, as he put it: ‘You can’t trust him, leave him to me.’ I loved working with these wonderful animals and soon realised how intelligent they are, once they know you. The fact that I was feeding them helped and I grew in confidence as they accepted me, recognising my voice. During the good weather Mr Bleasdale was allowed to graze the horses on the fields surrounding the army camp. One day he asked me to lead one of the mares down to the pasture fields and slipped a rope bridle over its head that I could hold onto. ‘Bring the bridle back,’ he told me. ‘And don’t try to ride her,’ he added.

Off I went, leading the mare as he had instructed me to, along School Lane, until we came to a lamp post. The temptation was too much for me and I shinnied up the post and threw my leg over. As I held onto the bridle the mare began to trot, slowly at first; then she gathered speed. What I had not taken into account was the fact that I was not the only one who knew where we were heading. The attraction of the lush fresh grass was calling. My calls for her to slow down went unheard as she started to gallop.

The American soldier on guard that day was a very big black man, who, as I passed him at great speed yelled out: ‘Ride ’em cowboy,’ and then started to belly laugh. I threw myself off the horse, landing on the grass by good fortune.

Rolling over and over I came to rest, soon to be surrounded by more soldiers who came running out of the guard house.

They all made a fuss of me and once it had been established 28

that I had not been hurt, I was given sweets and a very nice fizzy drink. After a brief rest I set off in search of the mare; she was enjoying the freedom and the grass, as if nothing had happened. Removing the bridle I made my way back to the stables via the guard house to say thank you to my new found friends, who gave me a great send off. I just about made it to school on time.

My mind now began to focus on school work, which thanks to Miss Cushing had become more interesting and I was entered for an entrance exam to Birkenhead High School. This consisted of two parts; the initial one was related to general intelligence. A week or so later, we received a letter to say that I had passed and inviting me back to take the next part. This was related to specific subjects, some of which I had not had any tuition in. I did not pass and discovered some time later that most of those boys who did pass had been tutored in the subjects privately. Also many of them had brothers already in the school and/or their fathers had been educated there. It was that type of establishment, and I don’t believe I would have been happy there. However, the experience was valuable, in that it showed me what it was like to take an exam. My mum had accompanied me on both trips, full of pride, telling anyone who would listen, but that’s what mums are like.

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Choir Boy 1948 Chapter 3 Grammar School My next exam would be the 11 plus which I took the week prior to going on holiday. When we returned there was a letter to say that I had passed and been allocated a place at 30

Rock Ferry High School. This was a considerable distance from where we lived and required me getting two buses to get there. Also I was acutely aware from overhearing conversations between Mum and Dad that it was going to cost quite a sum of money to rig me out. As I now pause and reflect, this was a pivotal moment in my life, and one of those moments that stay with you. Grammar Schools had only just been introduced, a new experience for the staff that ran the schools and the people who were selected to attend. It was day one for everyone; the first morning was overwhelming for me. I had moved from a village school of 20-25 children, walking into an assembly hall holding 250 people. It was an experience unlike anything I had ever had to deal with. I looked around; down one side of the hall sat all of the masters in their university caps and gowns, with the fur collars indicating the subject they taught. The opposite side of the hall was occupied by the prefects, with the head boy at the top resplendent in the school colours which edged his blazer. This really was ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’ personified in my young mind. I did have Miss Cushing to thank for that; it was an extremely emotional experience that I found difficult to deal with. Following the assembly we were directed to our respective class rooms and issued with both text and exercise books by our form master, Mr Ellams, who taught English. My mind was in a turmoil and things were about to get worse.

During all this confusion I had been putting my name in the books issued to me and, to my horror, I had spelt one of my Christian names wrong. I was never allowed to forget it. On the positive side, I became well known in a short period of time as this swept through the school.

As Cecil B DeMille once remarked, ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity.’ The headmaster, who was always referred 31

to as ‘The Gaff’, sent for me and we had what I recall as a long conversation. He asked me lots of questions, then, just prior to finishing our chat he stood up in front of me and asked me to look at him, which I did. He then asked me to return to my classroom, but as I reached the door, he called out: ‘Nelson, how many buttons do I have on my waistcoat?’ I replied immediately: ‘Eight, Sir.’ ‘Correct,’ he answered, ‘I think that you will be alright.’ Praise indeed from a well-rounded man, who it transpired understood people and life.

My education over the next five years continued to be a painful process. My classmates were a great bunch of boys, with whom I quickly bonded. Soon involved in all the sporting aspects of the school, I went on to represent them at rugby, swimming, basketball, cricket and athletics. I had a natural ability with sports, which I discovered and developed over the next five years and this gave me a degree of selfconfidence and standing within myself and the school. I was however aware that I was operating on two levels. On the one hand, I was trying to grasp the reality of day-to-day learning.

Trying to find answers to the mass of new information coming my way: French, Latin, Spanish, Chemistry, Physics, etc; this was the difficult bit. Yet at the same time I was aware subconsciously of other things which were of benefit to me, but difficult to measure or quantify. This was a most confusing time and it took me five years to clearly separate these two levels and understand where and how they fitted into my life.

Then, to really make life difficult, I began the journey from childhood to adulthood via adolescence. Yes, I was growing up! Yes, it happens to all of us, well most of us. I even revisited Mavis Sutton in my mind and realised what it was that had fascinated me and life is indeed strange. Things at home were 32

not getting any easier or helpful to the problems that confronted me. Mum constantly had her hands full, Dad continued to work long hours and it’s not hard to see that even if things had been more to my liking at home, neither of them would have been in a position to solve any of my problems. In short, circumstances had once more conspired to place me in a disadvantageous position—well that’s what I thought. I needed to establish good relationships with my classmates and at the same time try to communicate with the masters, some of whom were very against the Grammar School concept. I eventually worked this out, but getting the masters to see my problem was not an easy task. Roy Williams and Bill Clare were very supportive, due to the sporting connection, and I owe a great deal to George Eager, the music master who I had trust in. Due to my singing ability I was in his choir and sang solos on speech nights. Also I will never forget the patience and tolerance shown to me by Mr Murray, the Spanish master; my attempt’s to understand this beautiful language must have driven him to distraction. I did in fact leave school with only one Spanish saying locked into my head. It was the Spanish for ‘What time is it?’ Imagine my pride, when many years later in Barcelona I was asked this very question and responded by showing my watch to a very impressed Spanish gentleman. My wife was also aghast at my linguistic ability. How I wish Mr Murray could have been there. In reality, I was making steady progress with the help of the above masters, my ability at sport and my involvement in the choir. My relationship with my class mates was always good and another aspect that has come to me in writing this story is the fact that both the sport and the singing placed me in direct contact with a far wider group of pupils.

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My twelfth birthday had taken place when I became aware that we were thinking about looking for another house. My sister was now four years old and still sleeping in the same bedroom as my mum and dad. We had made application for a three-bedroomed house and it was now being dealt with by the council. Mum wanted to go and live on the Mount estate.

This would have been ideal for my new school but it was not to be; they allocated us a three-bedroomed house, situated on the Woodchurch estate, which was way out of town, badly served by public transport, had no shops and was still under construction. I think it fair to say that the only member of the family who was happy with this decision was my mum: there was a bathroom. It was awful to begin with: winter, no lights yet working, long walks to the bus stops and a bad service when you got there. To make matters worse my dog Rex who was just about my best friend ran back to our old house after Mum let him out while I was at school. I’m sure she did it on purpose. I went to bring him back on Saturday, since there was no school. Mrs Edge, our old next door neighbour, had taken him in and looked after him very well. The following week the same thing happened; there was now real conflict between myself and Mum for the first and only time in our life. I was not going to win this one, but Mrs Edge very kindly took Rex in and made a good safe home for him. Life, as the saying goes, does go on.

My sister now had her own room, my brother and I shared, and Mum and Dad had their room next to the bathroom. As a family it took us quite a while to adjust to our new surroundings. Slowly the bus service improved, the street lamps started to work and eventually they even built some shops. Meanwhile there were big changes at school; the headmaster retired. He, like most of the masters, had been at 34

the school since it was new in 1926, and so, after some twenty-six years, Mr Griffiths was given a great send off, bought a new Rover 75 motor car and drove off into the sunset of retirement. His replacement, a Mr Worrall, arrived and started a litter campaign on day one. He was obsessed with this subject and had gangs of boys, me included, scouring the grounds – some 26 acres I may add – for litter of any kind.

I never understood how his mind functioned; no doubt he had the same problem with me. He did in fact go to the same church as my mum. Dad never went to church, so I usually went with her and I can remember him complimenting me on my singing one Sunday and that’s about as far as it went. He also caned me, for what he referred to as poor work and not trying. I never forgave him for that and did him a great favour in not telling my dad, who would have had been very quick to put him in his place. I think it best to say I did not like him and leave it at that.

Life at home continued to improve, as my brother and sister became more able to join into things. They also started school, which was a big help to Mum. My dad was still working for the shipping company, but his main interest in life was by far the trade union movement. He was a great friend of Jack Jones and they both belonged to the Transport and General Workers Union branch on the dock road in Liverpool. After he finished work, I did talk with him about his involvement and he told me that he had been appalled at the working conditions that ship-builders had to contend with, and being the man he was he decided to get involved. Hence his relationship with Jack Jones.

I can recall men constantly calling to the house, asking for help and advice, and slowly but surely he began to rise through the ranks. In those days there was a real need for 35

unions and people like him that would not back off when things started to get hot. He never to my knowledge missed a meeting. A most interesting story told to me by a workmate of my dad’s illustrates just how difficult life was for the working man in the ship yards. The first refrigerated ships to be built on the Mersey were ordered by the Vestey family to bring their meat back from the huge cattle ranches they owned in Argentina. The meat was placed in cold store in Liverpool and then distributed and sold through the Dewhurst chain of butchers’ shops. This operation brought them a fortune, making them money at every stage of the process. The ships were being built by Clovers, who had a large shipyard in Birkenhead, where Dad was the union man working as a labourer. He began to get complaints on a daily basis that the materials used in the refrigeration process were rotting the men’s boots, which they had to buy at their own expense then. Dad went to see the man in charge of the job, asking him to renegotiate the hourly rate and he refused. Dad then asked him who he could talk with in order to resolve the problem. Trying to be seen as a bit of a comedian, the man said: ‘Try Lord Vestey.’ ‘Where do I find him?’ asked Dad. Opening the office window the comedian pointed across the river from Woodside to the Liver Buildings. ‘He’s got an office over there,’ he informed Dad. An hour or so later my dad returned, having been seen by the man himself, with a letter authorising higher rates of pay for all men involved in insulating the new ships.

Later in life when I was working and in my very early years as a manager, I did start to realise how difficult it must have been for him in 1940 trying to make any progress. However, by my time the situation had changed completely and we had some interesting discussions. Not long after the twins started 36

school my dad applied for a job at Cadbury’s, who had decided to build a factory in Moreton. This was good news for Wirral, bringing 6000 new jobs to the area, one of them going to Dad. This had a very positive effect on our household; it was an easier job with regular hours and nearer to home. Whether he had been out to celebrate we will never know, but he announced one evening over dinner that he had been given a bulldog by one of his boxing mates, a man named John Best. I was given the job of going to collect the animal, and taking my brother set off across the fields to Prenton. When we arrived the man looked rather surprised, but assured me that it was a very friendly, good natured animal; he should have added: ‘providing it gets its own way!’ Securing the dog with a length of strong rope we set off. All went well until we reached the end of the road and entered the field. Then, feeling the soft ground, it started to gather speed. Remembering my encounter with the horse, I immediately pulled back on the rope and for a few hundred yards I held it back, but by sheer strength it started to pull me and then broke free with the rope still attached. It headed straight for the large cow pond, jumped in and enjoyed the water. Between us, my brother and I persuaded it to come out. I got the rope and we set off for home with a very wet dog that turned out to be a bitch answering to the name of Susie. Once in the house it became clear to me that my dad was not very comfortable, in fact he was very reluctant to go near it, whilst issuing instructions to one and all. My sister jumped onto a chair and refused to move, but the thing that finished it for the poor creature was that she placed herself in front of the fire, blocking all the heat and refusing to move. Eventually Mum enticed her into the back kitchen, my dad put his coat on and some twenty 37

minutes later arrived back with Johnny Best, who promptly left with the bulldog.

After my dad had been in his new job for a year or more, an opportunity came up that enabled my mum to work there as well. They needed a cook and someone to organise the canteen, quite a demanding job, and mum applied and got it. I suppose having worked for Lord Mostyn looks well on your CV. This was good news. With more money coming into the house and my brother and sister now at school, life became far more settled and I used to look forward to dinner each evening as we all sat around the table discussing the various events of the day. Looking back one can see just how quickly this period in our family life went by, yet at the time it was if it was going to last forever. This is of course what family memories are all about, simple everyday routines that we take for granted; we should all learn to enjoy them more.

I continued to forge ahead at school. The academic slope was just as steep and confusing, but I had my sporting ability to give it all some balance. I had won a year’s free swimming at the school baths, Byrne Avenue, which encouraged me to join the Birkenhead swimming club and my times started to improve. I swam every day except Sunday and it made a great difference. I also started to grow and put on some weight in all the right places.

More importantly the time was rapidly approaching when my school days would end and I needed to think about what direction I wished to go in regarding employment. I applied for and received an application form for Customs and Excise; they had a big presence in Liverpool. My dad went mad with me but did not tell me why he was so against me joining this organisation. The stalemate was broken in a strange way, when right out of the blue Mr Worrell called me into his office 38

and told me he had been approached by a local garage owner, who had connections with the school, as he needed an apprentice. He suggested that I call and see him and offer my services, which I did, accepting his offer of a five-year apprenticeship in what he termed ‘motor engineering’. This was a big mistake and could have been an even bigger one. I knew in my heart that I did not want to work there and my visit had done nothing to dispel that feeling. My dad had seen some kind of compromise in me going there and was not passing any opinion.

It was against this background that I began my working life. The garage was situated on the Old Chester Road between The Oval and Dacre Hill. Five other people worked at the garage. Len Parsons was the foreman and had been in the army with the man who owned the garage (Sidney Ollerhead), as well as Tony Keirren, a skilled mechanic, who was also good at electrics. There was Jack Furlong just coming to the end of his apprenticeship and waiting to do his National Service, the idea being that I would take Jack’s place. The staffing was completed by Tommy Jones and Dorothy, odd job man and petrol attendant respectively. The reality of my situation soon became clear; I became the car washer, frequently interrupted to serve petrol.

Some days later I received a letter from the Birkenhead Technical College informing me that I now qualified for dayrelease, paid for by the college. I immediately shared this information with Sidney who told me that they must have made a mistake. Nevertheless I started to attend day-release at what was then a new state-of-the-art technical college, taking an ONC in mechanical engineering. Suddenly I started to understand maths, making my life just about bearable. I 39

was learning what at times appeared to be a new language, which is what maths is.

40

Chapter 4 Making My Way My social life had now started to expand in that I was playing rugby for the old boys on Saturday afternoons. One week, returning home on the bus after the game covered in mud and blood, I met up with one of my tech college friends who thought I had been involved in an accident. I explained I’d been playing rugby and the showers were not always working. He suggested that I may be better off trying my luck at soccer, and asked me to at least give it a try by training with his club each Wednesday night. That’s how I came to change codes, playing with the round ball instead of the oval one. The club was Stork Margarine Works, who had three teams and excellent facilities adjacent to their factory in Bromborough.

Starting in the third team I began my football career, which would prove a winner for me as well as solving my problems related to Sidney and his petrol pumps.

The man managing the third team for Stork AFC was John Kerns, who worked in the factory but had in fact played as a goal keeper for Liverpool. He was passionate about football and more to the point he knew what he was talking about, as I would soon discover. He was well worth listening to. He put me into the team at centre forward, telling me to run in behind the defence of the opposition, pointing out to me that no defenders liked being turned; as true today as it was then in 1953. At half time he passed on more information related to the various defenders, such as, which side to attack them on. By the time the game started again I always felt I was going to score, with my head full of information that gave me the advantage over the people who were trying to stop me and it worked. I started to score goals week in and week out. Within 41

twelve weeks I had moved into the next team up and, applying John’s shrewd observation to the opposition, continued to score. As the season drew to a close, I was taken to one side after training and told by Jake Davies, the club secretary, that I would be playing for the first team that coming Saturday.

Still only sixteen, I now found myself playing against men who did not like being made to look daft by ‘bits of kids’ – their words not mine. In this environment you very quickly adjust, indeed, thrive on the situation. It’s a wonderful feeling and I feel so lucky to have known what it felt like. My first reaction to this news was to go straight to John and thank him for all the help and insight he had given and shown to me: he looked more pleased than I did. Slowly I began to make my way, securing a position in the first team.

Stating the obvious, which is often overlooked, I found myself surrounded by much better players than I had been used to lining up with each week. My age worked to my advantage; they all wanted to look after me. One of my new team mates was Charlie McDonald, who also went on to play the game for a living. We quickly became the best of pals.

Charlie was an excellent player who could hold the ball and then release it into the space I was making my run into. He was a joy to play alongside and our partnership went from strength to strength as the understanding grew. The goals continued to flow and after a few weeks I was informed by the club secretary that a scout was at the game that afternoon, representing Burnley FC. They had made an official approach to Stork FC and wished to invite me for a trial, with a view to me joining them as a player, and that they would write to me to this effect. I simply felt out of this world, or should that read ‘over the moon’?

42

The letter arrived on Monday morning, waiting for me as I returned from Sidney’s garage that afternoon. After a discussion with my family I confronted him with the situation on the Tuesday morning. I needed to ask him for the Saturday morning off in order to get to Burnley for the trial game. He refused point blank and underlined the situation by telling me not to raise the subject again. Jack Furlong had said he would stand in for me that Saturday and made this known to Len the foreman. We had reached a stalemate. My dad told me to go and play my game that Saturday, and that he would go to the garage and smooth things over with Sidney and that’s what we did. I went to play and scored twice for Burnley.

Dad’s day did not go as planned; once Sidney realised who my dad was, he turned nasty and ordered him off the premises. My dad pointed out that he was not on the premises, but standing on the public highway where he proposed to remain until he had explained his reason for being there. Sidney then made his first and last mistake of the day; he moved to push my dad. Dad, using Sidney’s momentum, swept him up and hung him by the back of his jacket on a convenient hook that had at some time been attached to the window-frame of the car showrooms, and there he remained until taken down by four men; two holding him, one keeping his coat free, whilst the remaining man unhooked his coat collar off the hook with the long window pole. It took approximately fifteen minutes, during which time Sidney completely lost whatever dignity he had ever had in that particular part of Bebington. Jack Furlong told me the story having had a front row seat, all the shop keepers knowing within a short time what had happened. My dad, having given Sidney some very sound advice: ‘If you follow me you will more than likely need an ambulance,’ walked up 43

to Dacre Hill and caught the next bus home. The more I think about it the more I see just how uncomplicated my dad’s life was; this incident was never spoken of in our house. When I got back from Burnley he simply asked me how things had gone and I told him. He then said: ‘I think you would be far better off away from that place,’ referring to Sidney’s garage.

The sequel to the above event was played out on the following Monday morning when Sidney, who had been waiting for me, rushed out telling me not to enter his premises. He then waved my employment cards in the air and, with what he saw as a grand gesture, threw my cards into the gutter adding the words: ‘That’s where you will end up.’ He turned his back on me and returned to whatever it was that he needed to do next. I caught the next bus home. The following day I received a letter from Alan Brown, the Manager of Burnley Football Club, inviting me to join them for a month’s trial and enclosing a postal order that more than covered my travelling expenses. As the saying goes, ‘As one door closes, another one opens’.

My life now completely changed in that I was faced with leaving my home and family and moving some fifty to sixty miles away to live in East Lancashire. The challenge that awaited me there I knew little or nothing about, but would have to be taken on board. I really did need some sound advice and on this occasion my dad’s ‘Say nothing, do nothing’ approach was indeed just that. As I sit here with all the benefit of hindsight, I would not wish to change anything, nor respond in a different way to any of the situations that I was confronted with. I made all the decisions with one exception, and that was the vital one of being given a chance to perform at the highest level. I had just turned seventeen and felt as if I had the world at my feet. I left home with my mother’s words 44

ringing in my ears: ‘You will never come back.’ She was almost right. Trains serving East Lancashire left Liverpool from Exchange station in those days, and as I put my small case on the luggage rack I was feeling good. My boots wrapped in the traditional brown paper stayed with me, and thanks to Miss Cushing I had a good book, Great Expectations, to read.

The journey flashed passed and I walked out of the station in Burnley onto the main road. Looking left, then right, there was only one car parked across to my left. Almost immediately a large man emerged and waved to me. I walked to meet him and came face to face with Alan Brown, who held out his hand, welcoming me to Burnley. We drove to Turf Moor which was very near to the station from what I remember. He asked me if I was fit and said he wanted me to play in the third team on Saturday. I replied that I was fit and ready to play today if he needed me to. This went down well, or at least made him laugh. I did think that he would pass me on to another member of the staff, but no, he ran through all of the formalities with me, including how much I would earn each week and how I would be paid; it was all music to my ears. He then explained that I would eventually be staying with one of their long-standing and well-known land ladies, but they were decorating the premises and I would have to stay in a hotel until the house was ready. We then set off for the hotel and over lunch I was given my itinerary for next day, when I would start my training with the rest of the players.

This information also included which bus I needed to catch to get me to Gawthorpe Hall, which lies to the West of Burnley, nearer to Padiham. The club had not long moved all its training facilities to this location. As he left, wishing me all the very best, Mr Brown introduced me to the hotel manager making sure I knew that he, the manager, reported on a 45

weekly basis to the club the hours I came in each night. We all knew where we stood, but that was never going to be a problem for me.

I woke with a start early the following morning to a strange noise that I was unable to identify, and jumped out of bed to investigate. It was a group of mill girls on their way to work and the noise that had broken my sleep had been their clog irons on the cobbles, a noise soon to disappear from the streets as the mills closed down. It was very early but I would not be going back to sleep. I just lay there trying to imagine what the day held for me and reflecting on how life can change so quickly in such a short span of time. Eventually it was time for breakfast, after which I put my boots into a holdall I’d brought with me and set off for the bus stop. I do realise that making comparisons with today’s game is of no use; sixty years have passed, the world has changed so much. However the bus when it arrived had on board at least twenty players, including internationals, from all four home countries. None of the Burnley players had a motor car, indeed the only cars I observed in my time there belonged to the manager and the chairman. The bus reached our destination and gave up its priceless cargo, including yours truly.

The training establishment and facilities at Gawthorpe Hall were set well back from the small lodge-cum-gatehouse, where the bus had dropped us off and could only be reached, when I was there, by walking down a long single-track road.

When we got to the end of this track some farm-type buildings appeared with what looked like a large barn in the centre.

Some of the small buildings had been knocked through and joined up to make changing rooms and large baths; it was all very basic, but practical. A small, older man called me over and told me that this is where I should get changed into my 46

kit each day. ‘Just help yourself to the training gear and put it back into the big bag each night; it gets washed every day.’ He then introduced himself as Billy Morris. I recognised him as an ex-Burnley player and Welsh international. ‘I’m the third team and reserve team coach with George Bray, who we will meet outside; you will work with us each day.’ During our conversation my Liverpool accent had been picked up by another Liverpool voice who called to me: ‘Come over here son, you will only find Irishmen and Geordies round here; you get changed by me.’ The voice belonged to a lad who played in the first team, the observation he made about the origin of the players was a valid one. Burnley clearly had a very strong scouting system in place, both in the North East and in Northern Ireland. Naturally this was reflected in the players they recruited.

When everyone was kitted out we were led out across the open fields at a steady pace that slowly built up, returning to our starting point some forty minutes later. Billy Morris was waiting and we went straight into thirty minutes of exercise that gradually brought the whole group together with everyone breathing more or less at the same rate and relaxed.

I was so glad that I had followed my dad’s advice and put in some extra road work. We then divided into two groups and practiced short sprints against each other. By the time we had completed the sprints I was beginning to feel the strain of approximately ninety minutes nonstop movement.

We were kept moving, but at a much slower pace as more of the training staff arrived with large nets full of footballs with which we practiced passing while the trainers organised teams, handing out different coloured tops indicating which team you were to play in. At this point Billy Morris took me to one side to explain what was going to happen next; this 47

impressed me in that the attention to detail was most evident.

He explained to me what was in fact the principle that the club based its game on. Looking on from the touch-line as the game progressed, he indicated to me that the idea was very simple; you moved the ball and then you moved into space ready to take a return pass if the option was on. In addition it was drilled into you that you did not give the ball away; simple to understand, but difficult to put into practice. Lunch time had arrived and we split up into various groups. I was called over to one group by Tommy Cummings, who played at centre half for the first team and was also an England international. The club provided a pint of milk and a batch cake; however some players brought their own food. Football was the main topic of conversation; it was 1955 and the maximum wage of £20 per week was being challenged by a small group of the top players. I can remember Jimmy Hill and George Eastham being involved and quite naturally the subject generated a great deal of interest amongst the players. Various amounts were put forward, none of them anywhere near the £100 per week that Fulham FC offered Johnny Haines. This burst the bubble and the rest is history, as the saying goes. This in no way affected me, but I feel it well worth a place in my story since it was a real milestone in the history of the game. My wages incidentally had been agreed at £12 10s each week, plus a bonus of £4 for a win or £3 for a draw. This was not disclosed to me until the following week, when I signed for the club, after being interviewed by Bob Lord, the chairman, and Alan Brown. At the end of the interview and after the papers were signed, the chairman took his hearing aid out of his ear and looking at me asked: ‘Do you want to ask me anything?’ Catching Mr Brown’s eye, I replied: ‘No, thank you.’

It was the right thing to do.

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After lunch break, which lasted an hour, a full game was played with frequent stops to illustrate where and how the golden rules had not been followed. This was my favourite part of any day, where I learnt the fundamentals of the game from the people who played it for a living. The manager was very much involved in this aspect of the training, his passion and interest always on display for all to see. We finished training at 3.30 pm and had hot and cold baths before making our way back along the road to the bus stop. Then, in my case, it was back to the hotel where I could not wait to have my dinner and go to bed. My legs and body were so sore and this was only day one. This then comprised the basic training pattern at the club; if you had a game on Saturday, there was no training on Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were full training days as illustrated above, with light training on Fridays for those with a home game. This was ideal for me, since I was able to continue with my engineering studies each Monday, with the full approval of the club.

Thursday was by far the most interesting day. Mr Brown appeared at lunch time to pin up the teams on the notice board attached to the barn door, with every one crowding around to see if and for which team they had been selected.

This pattern continued for the next two weeks, during which time I had managed to score in each game I had been selected to play in. My aches and pains had begun to subside and I was feeling much stronger and fitter, even venturing out into Burnley to walk around. My companion on these trips was a lad who had arrived more or less at the same time as me. His name was Adam Blacklaw and he would go on to play for Scotland. He told me that he had been working as an apprentice brick layer and like me was most impressed that the club had given him the opportunity to continue learning 49

the technical side of the trade. I don’t remember the exact details, but I seem to recall that we played our first games in the reserve side on the same day, but it was fifty-nine years ago, so I could be wrong. It was very difficult to make the progress you wanted, but it’s true that impatience does go with youth. A man named Bill Holden was playing in the first team at centre forward, and even though I was trying to take his place I was amazed how he went out of his way to help me improve my game.

At the start of every season there are always night matches, and he asked me after training one day if I would like to come with him and another player to see a game at Manchester City that night. City were playing Arsenal and both teams had very different centre forwards. Don Revie was playing for City in a new formation, which ended up being called The Revie Plan, consisting of picking up the ball deep, some times in his own half, from one of the city half-backs. For the Arsenal team, Tommy Lawton was playing one of the last games of a wonderful career that had seen him being sold by Burnley to Everton as a young player prior to the war. They were in complete contrast. Bill Holden told me to watch Lawton’s movement when he did not have the ball, explaining to me how he kept taking people out of position. I found this fascinating as well as recognising just how well Bill Holden knew the game. At half time we were able to use the players’ lounge to get a cup of tea or soft drink by showing our club pass issued to all players. All the United players were at the game and it’s a great memory for me to hold, meeting so many of the magnificent team that would be torn apart by the plane crash later that season. They were not much older than me and I will always remember that evening. It truly was a most tragic and cruel accident that should have been avoided.

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I eventually moved in with my landlady and it really was ‘home from home’. She was such a kind, lovely lady, who gave me a home and fed me. The house was located on the north side of Burnley and close to where Billy Morris lived; we caught the same bus into town every morning and never stopped talking football, which I could not get enough of. The weeks rolled by and I started to grow and continued to put weight on, both assets to me on the pitch. Then one morning, as we split up into our groups, I noticed two new faces had joined the group. They were older than me and one of them came straight over and rather aggressively informed me that I was in his place, but that he would soon put that right. It took me completely by surprise and was so out of keeping with anything that had happened to me since I had arrived. There was the occasional scuffle, but football is a contact sport so you expect and accept it. George Bray had noticed and came straight over asking me if everything was okay. I told him I was fine adding: ‘Who are they?’ His answer took me by surprise and gave me a great deal to think about. He informed me that they had reported back to the club after completing their national service. In retrospect I’m amazed that it had never entered my mind. There had been so much going on in my life since I had left Sidney and his petrol pumps. My new career had swept me along; I was living in a new place; in short I had not thought about it.

I recognised that I needed to put this right and asked George if we could have a talk after training finished, to which he agreed. Clearly he thought I wanted to discuss my run-in with the new man; so my anxiety related to national service took him by surprise. He pointed out that everyone had this to go through and was soon telling me how the war had ruined his football life. This I understood and said so; my 51

concern centred on having nothing to fall back on or build a life around. He suggested that maybe I should talk to the boss about how I felt. After explaining my feelings all over again to Alan Brown, he sat back in his chair and told me that nobody had approached him with this problem, pointing out that I was doing well, playing in the reserve side at seventeen, he was sure that I had a future in the game, and who knows I may well have had.

However some weeks later Ray Pointer arrived from the North East. He was the same age as me, and as it turned out, a much better player, who did, in fact, go on to play for England.

The irony of the situation was that he was forced out of the game through serious injury when he was still quite young, exactly one of the things that had been going on in my mind as I wrestled with not having something to fall back on.

However, moving back to his arrival, I ended up back in the third team. I went to see Mr Brown again; he was very reasonable about the situation, even suggesting that I go to another club on loan. As I pointed out, this did not change the spectre of national service and my long term future. I then made a decision that affected the rest of my life, by asking him to release me to return home and try to pursue a future in engineering and play non-league. He asked me was I sure that this was what I wanted to do and emphasized that he would willingly keep me on, since he believed that I could make a living out of the game, but I’d made my mind up.

I have to say that I had nothing but admiration for Mr Brown. I kept in touch with him over the years as will become clear as the story unfolds. What he did next clearly illustrates why I have so much respect for the club and him in particular.

He asked me if I had anything in mind job-wise and I indicated that I would try to get a job with a company in Liverpool who 52

were the main agents for Jaguar cars. He asked me who they were and I told him. He immediately asked his secretary in the next office to get them on the phone; she put the call through and as I sat there he talked me into a job with a glowing reference thrown in. I played my last game for Burnley FC that Saturday, an away match at Bloomfield Road against Blackpool, which again has a touch of irony about it, being the place where I saw my first game on the choir boys’ outing. I scored!

Before leaving this vivid and rewarding period of my life, I would like to record how sad it is to see the demise of such a well-run club. When I played there they were so advanced in the way they looked after young players, as indeed I have reflected above. They were always in the top five or six sides in what was then the First Division, though even then they had to sell players to survive. The lack of a big crowd was always going to undermine their finances in the end, and now that the game is all about money it has finally caught up with them. They will have a place in my heart for as long as they play football. I always look for their score each Saturday and wish them well. It has to be said that the chairman Bob Lord did a wonderful job.

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Paris. European Cup, 1981

FA Cup, 1992 With Sam Wildman, a great friend and Evertonian 54

Hallum FC, 1965/66

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Army Football Team, 1959/60 Chapter 5 Watson’s and the Great Awakening I returned home a much different person in more ways than one. I was now much bigger and stronger than when I had left, having grown at least four inches and now weighing 11 stone 7 pounds. My wages had more than covered the cost of new clothes and I had managed to put some money in the Post Office, as well as sending my mum a postal order each week.

All this enabled me to face life in a far more confident frame of mind than I had left home with. I presented myself at W Watson’s on the following Monday morning, ready to begin the next phase of my life. Once all the paperwork had been completed in the office, the manager, Bob Little, took me out 65

and introduced me to the foreman of the repair shop, Harry Hampson, who was to be my boss for the next four years, during which time he proved to be a very fair-minded man, who, whilst not being a top-class engineer was an excellent manager. His ability to run a very busy department containing at least ten apprentices was top-class; he looked after all of us and the older we got the more we began to realise this and appreciate him.

The economic climate at this time was quite healthy, with the motor industry still doing well. Most of the British car manufacturers were doing well and were represented all over the country by agencies. Watson’s were at the top as far as agencies went, with a huge presence in Liverpool, Birkenhead and Chester.

The range of vehicles serviced and repaired at these locations covered most makes of vehicles on the road at that time, and together with the day-release technical college link, gave young people such as me every opportunity to obtain a most thorough grounding in motor engineering. I was determined to make sure that I was not going to waste this chance. At the Birkenhead garage we serviced and sold all the Jaguar, Rolls Royce and Bentley range of vehicles, with the Morris range providing what you might refer to as the bread and butter vehicles, alongside MG and Wolseley. This was the era prior to BMC, with all of the various makes of car being manufactured individually. Little did we know it, but this was the final phase of the British motor industry, both at home and abroad. My day-to-day job now became working on cars alongside a qualified mechanic to begin with. As you made progress the foreman would start giving you jobs to do; help was always available and of course there was the usual competition that went on between young men. My best pal at 58

this time was Bob Mathieson; we are still the best of friends after fifty-eight years, having spent a great deal of time together bringing our young children up, going on holidays when all we had were tents and having probably the best holidays we ever had.

Then in 1956 came the Suez Crisis. An Egyptian army officer by the name of Abdul Nasser became president of Egypt. One of the things that resulted from this event was that he nationalised the canal, resulting in both France and Great Britain, together with Israel, trying to regain control of what was an international waterway. Nasser then blocked the canal. Anthony Eden, the prime minister, was made to look somewhat politically inept. Also, this incident exposed for the first time that the position once held by the European powers had waned. The USA was running the show. Economically it was a disaster for Great Britain; all the oil coming from the Middle East had now to be shipped the long way round. The immediate effect was that fuel was rationed, forcing the price up and continuing to do so. What has all this got to do with my life? I hear you asking. Well the rationing of fuel took cars off the road, which had a strange effect on the garage trade, in that the big fleet owners put all their cars in and had them serviced and repaired. We were inundated with work; it lasted about three months and then the bottom dropped out of the trade. We were sitting looking at an empty garage, just like everyone else. The surprise was nobody was laid off or put on short time. Then one day Harry, our foreman, came into the mess room and asked if anyone wished to volunteer to help take the heating system down, which consisted of large iron pipes that had been erected in the roof and on the walls of the garage during the war, when the building had been used by the Ministry of Defence for constructing aircraft.

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The system was used to dry the glue and dope that had been used to fix the outer skin onto the aircraft frame. Norman Anderson, our most versatile and able handyman, was in charge and I said I would help him.

I was fed up doing nothing and my decision turned out to be a good one; I got to know Norman who became a good friend to me by showing me how to use all the tools and equipment in his workshop situated on the top floor and out of bounds to everyone. The next four months of my life were spent sixty feet up in the roof on the top of what is known as a Slingsbury ladder, one with a platform on top which sits on a trolley so it can be moved around. I’ll be glad if I never set eyes on one again. We took the system down, by which time the fuel rationing had been lifted and everyone was back in the workshop working on cars again.

It was during this period that I had found myself captivated by a girl who caught the bus each morning. Over-cautious would perhaps be the best way of describing my approach, or to put it more accurately, non-approach. She lived opposite the bus stop, and this comprised my total knowledge of her.

Also during this period I had together with some of my old school mates formed a basketball team called Pegasus; we played each Wednesday night at Livingstone Street. What’s the connection? Well, one morning I had overheard her telling another girl that she was going dancing on Wednesday night at the Kingsland Dance Hall. My enquiries had shown that the dancing started at 8.00 pm, whilst the basketball finished at 7.00, so the following week a few of the team, including me, decided to go dancing after the game. There she was and all I could do was look at her and try to think of what to do next.

The following morning we acknowledged each other. I was simply in awe of her, unable to function. This situation 60

continued for two weeks, then came the awakening. In order to ensure you got on the last bus, it was necessary to run down to the stop before the Kingsland and I always did this.

As I approached the stop she suddenly stepped out of a shop door way and standing in front of me said: ‘When are you going to ask me to go out with you?’ I immediately, and as eloquently as I could possibly manage, replied: ‘Now. May I take you home?’ This seemed to do the trick; she got hold of my hand and we boarded the bus as a couple. I had met the person that I would go through life with, and the one who would have the greatest influence on just about everything that would happen to me over the next forty-four years.

Our relationship blossomed, I was completely smitten. She came to see me play football each Saturday; we went everywhere together. I became a permanent fixture in her house and got on well with her mum and dad, who knew my parents. All of this happened during September 1956. Again I have to record how quickly life can change, and it really is amazing how your whole world can turn around in such a short span of time. Football and basketball continued to be an important part of my life; I was however very aware that my main focus had moved and that Shirley was without doubt important to me. We saw each other every day and looked forward to meeting. This feeling stayed with both of us for the rest of our life together.

We were now approaching bonfire night. With any number of stacks of wood scattered around the estate, we decided to go to one a fair distance away and, as we made our way back to her house, I started to talk to her about how I felt. This for me at that time in my life was a very new experience and I’m still amazed that I actually did it. However I must have said all the right things because she told me that was how she felt. We 61

kissed and made our way back to where her mum and dad lived. As soon as we had sat down Shirley announced our news and that was that. We decided to get Christmas over with and then save up and buy an engagement ring. This we kept to ourselves, not wishing to alarm our parents. Looking back on this, it’s amazing how simple it all looked. If only life could be like that. On the other hand it is best to at least have a plan; in effect that’s all we had, each other and a plan.

As Christmas approached, we started to get round the family, making sure they all knew that we were madly in love.

Some gave us funny looks while others blessed us, mainly Shirley’s family who were Catholics. My dad, always flying the flag for Northern Ireland, remarked that he had been out of luck since ‘that girl has been coming to the house.’ I ignored him, not rising to the bait, but Mum gave him a broadside and meant it.

Christmas duly arrived and arrangements were made regarding where and when we would have our Christmas meals. However, all this was pushed to one side when Shirley’s grandma decided that she wanted to visit her daughter who lived in Hull. The Smith family gathered to arrange this outing in the Bidston Hotel, situated in the north end of Birkenhead. They were a large family, of Irish descent; the grandma and granddad came from Cork and raised five boys and four girls, all born on Merseyside. The only one to move away was the girl now living in Hull, Auntie Eileen. After a few drinks they all decided to ‘seize the moment’ and set off that night, taking with them vast quantities of food and drink.

I’d never seen anything like it in my life. Shirley’s dad gave her the key to their house and asked me to look after things and said that they would be back in a few days’ time, ready to go back to work after the holiday. And off they went, a convoy of 62

vans and cars heading for Hull. We made our way back home on the bus, blissfully unaware that our lives were about to change forever. There would be no turning back; the die had been cast.

The next two years were all about work and saving up; I continued to play football and towards the end of the season broke my right ankle playing at Chester FC. Harry, our foreman, arranged for me to look after the tool stores, which meant that I did not have to stay off work. The summer months and good weather allowed me to get my fitness levels back ready for the next season and I was so looking forward to playing again. Then in the second game I broke the other ankle. It was back to the tool stores and more hard work getting fit again. These were the only injuries I had playing over a twenty-two year period, with the exception of the injury that resulted in me retiring. But more about that when we come to it.

In an effort to get more money in the bank, I took a job working as a barman in the Swan Hotel. This however prevented me from seeing Shirley, a situation neither of us wanted, and I went to hand my notice in after the first week.

The boss was not happy and asked me what the problem was, since he thought I was doing a good job. I told him, and he suggested that Shirley should come and work with me, so this is what we ended up doing. All went well until the clientele started to chat up my girl. Shirley was quite enjoying the attention, but at that age jealousy was my Achilles heel. We ended up leaving, but we had managed to save ÂŁ100, so blew the money on a two-week holiday in Cornwall, which was a wonderful experience. I hired a car from one of the customers, a Jowett Javelin.

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On our return the boss from the pub asked us to reconsider, as he thought we had a future in the business together. It did not appeal to either of us, so it was back to work and saving for an engagement ring. We picked the ring together in Liverpool from a shop in Ranelagh Street, just across from Lewis’ store where Shirley worked as a commercial artist. I met her after she had finished work on a Saturday lunch time; we all worked five and a half days a week then (1957). We went out for a meal to the Casa Italia, a favourite place we continued to use for the whole of our married life. I now felt that life was unfolding in the way I wanted it to; we were that much nearer to making our own life, which we so much wanted and constantly talked about.

Work at Watson’s was very busy. Jaguar had brought out a new saloon, using a range of twin overhead-camshaft engines.

Being able to work on these vehicles at my age was a privilege and you learn quickly as a young person. It looked stunning and was to find fame some years later as it became known as the Inspector Morse car. It also became very popular with the criminal fraternity as a getaway car, immortalised in the part it played in the Great Train Robbery. In short, everyone wanted to be seen driving a Jaguar. Even Dennis Law the Scottish international football player had one.

I had now started the last year of my apprenticeship and for the most part worked unsupervised. The company did very well out of this, in that they were charging my time out to the customer at £1 an hour whilst paying me just £6 per week, most frustrating when you are trying to save up to get married. My school work continued to go in the right direction and I was beginning to understand quite a lot of the theory. This made the job more interesting and more importantly made you think.

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A good example that has remained in my mind was connected to a Citroen motor car. We had two or three customers who ran this make of car. The main agents were situated way out of town on the Formby by-pass and so the owners used our services. The vehicle had been brought in because of an unusual noise when in motion; Harry had carried out the diagnosis and pronounced that the rear axle was the problem. This astounded everyone; the car was a front wheel drive, with the engine, gearbox and differential all at the front end of the vehicle. How he was able to pick out the fault did not make any sense, but the decision had been made.

A mechanic called Vin Mitten, our top man on Jaguars, was given the job. He asked Harry if I could work with him as all the clearances were in centimetres and needed to be converted into inches when we came to assemble the replacement parts. I was given this job and it gave me sleepless nights.

We eventually got it all back together and went out on the road to make sure the noise had gone. It was still there! Vin was in a right state and could get nasty if things did not go his way. He started to blame me for getting the clearances wrong.

I then had an idea and suggested that we take the vehicle to the main agents while on test. One of the lads in my night school class worked there and as we were able to pick out faults on Jaguars, they were just as likely to do the same on the Citroen. Off we went to Formby. I went into the workshop, found my mate and brought him to look at our problem. He got into the car and drove it across the forecourt, opened the drivers’ door and pronounced: ‘Nearside front wheel bearing!’ We asked if they would give us a new bearing and invoice Watson’s, which they did. We fitted the new one, which took us approximately ten minutes and returned to tell 65

Harry that all was well. There was no living with him, his reputation was now beyond question; the customer was given a bill for hundreds of pounds and everyone was happy.

Some weeks later, Harry asked me if I knew anything about an invoice that the stores had received related to a Citroen wheel-bearing, I silently crossed myself and said: ‘No.’ Such is life!

Prior to moving on to the next phase of my story, we must revisit the caretaker of my village school, who worked next door to the Birkenhead branch of Watson’s in a very narrow street. He worked for a man called Laurie McCann, who had the foresight to secure a Volkswagen agency, selling as many of these very popular vehicles as he could lay his hands on. As I came to know him better I quickly realised what a good mechanic he was. I was so pleased to meet up with him again and spent as much time as I could manage talking to him, learning a lot in the process. He was, in every sense of the word, a very nice man, who I enjoyed talking to. I learnt from our conversations that Mrs Povell, my mother’s saviour all those years ago, had now settled in Bala, North Wales, with her husband Cliff and they were both in good health. Mum was delighted to hear this; it’s always good to keep up with old friends. Laurie McCann’s business went from strength to strength, on the back of a very good product and the excellent service he gave to his customers.

An interesting story has only recently come to light. I enjoy membership of a local branch of Probus (a retired businessman and professionals club) and at a recent meeting I had sat next to a new member during lunch. Our conversation eventually got round to what we had done for a living and the new man, Godfrey, told me he had worked for a large motor factory in Liverpool some years ago, adding that: 66

‘You probably would not have known them.’ When he told me who it was, I immediately said: ‘I served my engineering apprenticeship there in the Jaguar department,’ and that was it. We both became very animated on the subject, this being one of the many joys of Probus. He told me the tale of how he became the proud owner of a circa 1967 Jaguar ashtray, of which only 250 were made. Apparently the MD at Watson’s during this period, RT Grantham, had been given one by Jaguar Motors because Watson’s had sold so many vehicles.

He then brought this to the attention of Rolls Royce, who also sent him an ash tray, which was rather more prestigious and the one that he had wanted in the first place. Then he kindly gave Godfrey the Jaguar one, which he was most pleased to accept. A good story to end my chapter on Watson’s and the time I spent there with people I still have as friends, to which I can now add Godfrey.

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Jaguar Ashtray

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Chapter 6 Marriage in the Shadow of the Army Our wedding was very much a family affair, dominated by the Catholic Church to which Shirley belonged and attended. I found it very difficult dealing with the priest, who was very Irish. I simply did not understand why this man, who knew nothing about life and marriage in particular, was instructing me on this very subject, with I may add, a great deal of authority. Needless to say we were mostly at cross purposes, in that he was asking me to give him solemn undertakings directly related to my life. In addition, I had always believed that I would get married at the church where I had been in the choir; it was not to be. The only thing that we did agree on was the date, and even that proved difficult in that the first date he offered me clashed with a cup-tie I was playing in. We eventually married on the 19th April, 1958 in St Joseph’s Church, Upton. Very few people attended.

I know my dad, an Ulster man to the core, only just made it. How ridiculous it all looks now. I felt wonderful, as did my lovely wife, and in reality that is all that mattered.

The decision to actually go ahead and get married was quite spontaneous and came about when Shirley had taken three days off work that were due to her. She arrived at Watson’s at lunch time on her bike, and we walked together to Hamilton Square Gardens, where she told me that she had found a flat in the local property adverts that would be just right for us. That evening we looked it over. It was an old Victorian house in an area known as Devonshire Park, standing on the highest part of Tranmere. The lady who owned it, Winnie Bulien, lived on the first two floors and wanted to rent out the top floor which had been decorated. It 70

looked like heaven to us and we agreed to take it on. This news did not go down so well; eyebrows were raised and pointed questions asked. This did not go down very well with Shirley or me either. However it was soon resolved and two months later we were married.

After the ceremony, we all went back to her mum’s house for the traditional boiled ham tea, followed by ‘a bit of a do’.

Everyone came and the house was packed. All my school mates arrived as well as family and neighbours. My only overwhelming regret was that I had not remained with my first choice of best man, Bob Mathieson. I’d changed this only during the previous few days, due to pressure from family and friends who were telling me that Bob was too young.

What nonsense! The person I did ask was Roy Best who worked at Watson’s and I never saw him again after the wedding. It was a dreadful mistake, for which I did apologise to Bob, who more than got his own back on me with a classic move. When the time came for us to leave the wedding party, he offered to take us to Lime Street so we could catch the London train. Knowing Bob as I did and being a very sensitive soul, I had been watching his every move, even pleading with him not to try any funny stuff, such as ‘Just Married’ signs on the car. We set off. Arriving at the station we made our way to the correct carriage. Bob saw us into our seats, closed the door and waved goodbye, walking back to his car. I sighed with relief and sat down. Within a minute or so he returned, having taken a huge metal sign from the car boot, without doubt painted at Watson’s. ‘JUST MARRIED’, it read. He handed it to me and all the other passengers in the carriage started to laugh, as indeed we did.

The honeymoon lasted for a week, after which we returned home and started our life together in the flat. There was only 71

enough money left for one of us to get the bus to work; that had to be Shirley working in Liverpool as she did. I walked to work; it was all downhill and I felt on top of the world in more ways than one. Once we had got into a routine it quickly became apparent that we needed to be earning more money.

National service was still in force and I was approaching the stage where the authorities would not defer me for much longer. I went to talk with the manager at work and told him that now I had reached the age of twenty-one I needed to be put on the top rate, working on the top range of vehicles, as indeed I had been for at least the past twelve months. He agreed with me, but pointed out that the directors had a company policy that this could only happen after national service had been completed. I could not see the reason for this, and before I realised painted myself into a corner by saying: ‘If that’s the case, I’ll have to look for another job.’ And that’s what happened; in fact we both went to new jobs.

Shirley found a job at what at that time was the best shop in Birkenhead, Robb Brothers. She ran the reception desk and enjoyed not having to travel each day to Liverpool and also we were saving money. I asked around in the trade and found that the best wages were being paid in Liverpool, at Fazakerley Engineering, who had taken on the Ministry of Defence contract that Watson’s had once had. The downside was that the company was situated on the outskirts of the city.

I went for an interview and got the job; there was no turning back now. Getting there was a real hike, but I needed the money.

We had moved out of the flat, which proved to be the wrong thing to do: I will come to that later. We moved into a semi-detached house, owned and still lived in by an old lady, who said she needed company. The house was in walking 72

distance of the flat, so the area was familiar to us and on a main bus route. My journey to work now started with me rising at five-thirty to catch the first bus to Woodside Ferry, cross the Mersey, get a bus at the Pier Head to get me work at seven-thirty, getting back home for 8.00 pm, Monday to Friday. As word got round that I was leaving, two other men decided to join me. They were both older than me and very skilful mechanics. It helped that I was not going in at the deep end by myself, however it did not quite work out the way I thought it would. They both left within two weeks.

The system employed by the company was to give each man their own job. My new foreman was called Steve, who was always okay with me. He explained that I had been allocated a bay on the Leyland line and took me round to the location. A forklift truck operator was in the process of lowering a Leyland chassis frame onto two trestles. Once it was in position Steve explained to me where I could keep my tools, and basically how the system worked. In effect I had 220 hours to build an eight-wheeled vehicle and drive it off the line, to where the body would be fitted. The bonus system was very simple; for every hour I took over the target figure, I owed the company 2s 6d: for every hour I took less than the target figure, 2s 6d went towards my bonus, which would be paid at the end of each month. It was for me and Steve to agree my hours worked, and in the event of not being able to agree, the works manager would be consulted, his decision being final. We then visited the stores which were massive; the company was building and overhauling five types of military vehicle, the turnover in component parts being an essential element in ensuring that finished vehicles continued to come off the assembly lines. All the parts were supplied from the Ministry of Defence via the various manufacturers; it was a 73

big, complex operation which must have taken a great deal of planning to put together and keep running. I was introduced to one of the storekeepers, Alan, who would supply me with all the parts I ordered from the stores. He also had to supply five other mechanics building vehicles. Clearly I needed to establish a good working relationship with him in order to maximise my ability to make my bonus. He turned out to be excellent at his job and I do not recall ever having a cross word with him.

I was now equipped with all the information I needed to begin building my very first Leyland, not a task for the fainthearted. It took me two vehicles to break even, and by the end of my second month I was making good bonuses. I had without doubt grown up able to hold my own in a most intense working environment. It soon became clear to me that any bonus system was never going to result in harmony within any workforce; it was simply a means to an end and required good management to make it work. Having said that, it was a good experience for me at that tender age and one that I was able to draw on later in life as I progressed into management Football was still an important part of my life at this time.

Each Saturday morning Shirley and I would catch the bus to visit our parents, my mum’s in the morning and then down to her mum’s house. I would go off to play in the afternoon and pick her up, often staying to go for a drink to the local with her dad, with whom I had made a real friendship. He was such a lovely man and I always valued his company and advice.

During this period I was asked if I wanted to play for Blaenau Ffestiniog in the Welsh League, the offer coming from the works manager in Fazakerley, who had played non-league football himself and seen me play. I accepted his offer, which 74

was generous compared with what I was getting. This meant that I could no longer go with Shirley on a Saturday to our parents.

The army was getting nearer and the other big thing was Shirley was pregnant. The money in the Welsh League was good and I played there until I was called up in February 1959. Sarah, our first daughter, had been born on the 15th of January. It was very hard for me to try and understand why I should leave both my wife and child and join the Army, when they really did not know what to do with you when you got there. I do not think that people would put up with it now.

Changing my job, together with playing football, had enabled me to buy everything for the baby. I had ÂŁ100 left, which I gave to Shirley before setting off with a very heavy heart, to Honiton in Devon for my basic training.

My view of national service was, in short, that I had two years of my life stolen at a time when it really mattered to me.

Two more years working at Fazakerley would have seen me settled in my own house with my family around me, so it should not come as a surprise that I travelled to Honiton with a chip on my shoulder. The journey took forever and I arrived there at lunch time the following day, having left Lime Street just after midnight. As ever, I was first to arrive, reporting to the guard room as instructed. I was then directed to Hut 29 and told to wait there. The hut looked like something out of a Wild West movie, where the saloon had just been wrecked.

All the beds had been taken apart, the lockers were all overturned and the floor was covered in ashes from the stove in the centre of the hut. I set about trying to make some order out of the mess, assembling the beds, spacing them out evenly, claiming the one next to the fire for myself. I had just started on the lockers when I was joined by another conscript, 75

Keith from Huddersfield. Together we finished off tidying the hut. Gradually it filled up to the capacity of twenty people.

There were two more huts, making sixty men in all, which completed the intake.

We were all taken outside in absolute chaos by three small but extremely aggressive lance corporals, who all appeared to me to be foaming at the mouth and suffering from a form of epilepsy. The main message coming across was that the sergeant would be making an appearance the following morning and we had better buck our ideas up or else! After a lifetime of my dad, nothing I saw in the army came anywhere near him, so I remained calm, as the saying goes.

The following morning started at 4.00 am, being directed across a muddy field in the general direction of two small buildings, each of which contained a toilet and a sink supplied with a cold water tap. The trio of corporals had not calmed down, running up and down the lines with implicit instructions of what was expected of every man when we reached the sink and toilet. Now I can moan with the very best, but I became aware of a voice that placed me in a much lower division when it came to moaning. The voice belonged to the guy in the next queue. Arriving at our respective sinks at the same time, I was in awe of him as I tried to shave outdoors in cold water, with the temperature well below freezing. He never let up. Meet John Gordon, native of that great city, Sheffield, and my lifelong friend. He was billeted in Hut 28, next door to me. At the end of our basic training John was posted to Germany to a tank regiment, and we said our goodbyes, only to meet up many years later under the most unusual circumstances, as my story will show.

Basic training lasted for six weeks. I of course wrote each day to Shirley. We passed out after learning how to kill people 76

with a Lee Enfield rifle, Bren gun, Sten gun and hand grenade.

We were given a forty-eight hour pass home at last, before heading back to see where we would get posted following our introduction to the army.

The powers that be had decided to close Honiton as a training camp. This slowed down the need to post everyone out in order to make room for a new intake every week. We more or less became members of the permanent staff, with nothing to do. This situation only confirmed my view that they did not know what to do with us. Football came to my rescue again in the form of Major Booth, who became our company commander, but more interestingly ran the army football team. I was playing for the camp team and also had played a few games for Exeter FC under an assumed name when he arrived. A Scottish lad who was signed up with one of the Glasgow clubs played alongside me at Exeter. They would only play us in night games, why I’ll never know. The Glaswegian said nobody would recognise us due to the bad floodlights, but only he and I got the joke. It did not really matter, and the money came in very handy.

After two or three weeks the Major got the team together and told us all that we would be going to Borden in Hampshire, twelve miles south of Aldershot. This was the headquarters of REME, also known as 6th Training Battalion, and a very big camp. So at last we knew our destination and I would remain there until they discharged me.

The journey to our new camp was made by rail via London and we had to carry all our kit, which kept dropping out of those huge kit bags that had to be carried on the shoulder. It was a pantomime as we made our way on the tube across London and then on to Aldershot, where a lorry from Borden awaited to take us to our new abode. I was allocated, along 77

with four of my mates, to a room in Havana Barracks with central heating, absolute luxury after the Nissen hut I’d left behind in Honiton. However, you can’t win them all; the food was dreadful! This did in fact lead to a quite serious enquiry that found its way into the Sunday newspapers and to our relief improved the standard of the food. The amount of food was more than adequate, but the preparation was just not up to the job. All the cooks were moved on and their replacements proved to be most satisfactory.

Borden was the home of the Centurion tank, the best tank in operation at that time. We had come through the Second World War having to rely on the American armoured vehicles when it came to facing the German Panzer tanks. Now we had our own and it was a winner. Even the Israelis were buying them from the Ministry of Defence. All the national servicemen who came to 6th Training Battalion had a similar engineering background and the sixteen week course we were put through was excellent. When successfully completed, the usual arrangement was to be posted out to one of the armoured divisions, which at that time were scattered all around the globe. I took the course and did very well. Each course member was interviewed by Major Booth and the chief civilian instructor and then given their posting. I was offered a post at the school as an instructor, which I was delighted to accept. I would not have to go abroad, where most of the armoured divisions were stationed. The big plus for me was that I would be able to get home to see Shirley and Sarah, who was now beginning to sit up and take notice.

During this period I had been playing football each Saturday for Guildford Town, who played in the Southern League. They regularly attended all the army games which took place on a Wednesday. Most of our team played for non78

league sides and three of us had been taken on by Guildford, who paid ÂŁ7 10s per game. This money was a real life-saver for me and meant that I could send home money every week to Shirley. I had also applied for day-release to attend Guildford technical college each Friday. This was granted and enabled me to continue with my engineering studies. This then became the pattern of my life until I was discharged.

I like to think that I made the most of my national service in spite of the attitude I started with. One thing that was evident to me was my level of fitness; playing two games and training each day had brought it up to the level I enjoyed at Burnley. On the days that I did not play a match, my routine was to run in the evening to Basingstoke and back to camp, some fourteen miles. We had also been introduced by Major Booth to a new trainer, who by chance was a Liverpool lad and a physical training instructor. He introduced our team to weight-training based on speed and light weights; it made such a difference during the game. The other major change to my game came when the Guildford manager asked me to play in midfield. Suddenly I’d found my position. It really improved my game and I was always involved in the thick of things.

Given these facts it is not surprising that my fitness improved.

We went on that season to win the league and reach the final of the Army Cup. The team we faced was The Royal Army Service Corps. The game was played at Aldershot.

The Scottish lads in our team had been telling us all about a player called Alex Young; the English boys had not heard of him. He was playing for Heart of Midlothian. What a player! I feel very privileged to say that I did play in a game on the same pitch. He was the complete player, always balanced, more dangerous off the ball than on it at times. That to me was his great talent; you never knew whether to mark him or the 79

space, and while you were trying to make your mind up he had gone. Watching him play years later at Goodison Park always took me back to trying to stop him. They beat us 4-3, but it’s a memory that will always stay with me. The teams of that era were full of good players doing their national service and the standard was high. I’ve included a photograph of our team who came from all over the United Kingdom and had all played professionally; it was a good time.

Football is of course a winter game, so during the summer months my main preoccupation was getting home at weekends to see Shirley and Sarah, who was now a real little person. She always knew me and came to me, which was a wonderful feeling. My normal method of getting home was to hitchhike. Leaving Guildford Tech on a Friday afternoon, I caught a tube to the most northern station and then started to thumb lifts. If I could get to St Albans by 6.00 pm I would get into Liverpool in time to catch the last train across to the Wirral, and then run the last seven miles home. My mum always gave me my fare back: Lime Street to Crewe and then on to Aldershot, trains heaving with servicemen, all pouring back to their locations in the south. The real downer was getting stuck in St Albans on the way home and then having to start trying to get back to Borden, but more often than not I made it home.

Meanwhile my job as an Instructor was going well. The course was made up of ten students, the instructor and a Centurion tank. Starting in the workshops, the tank was stripped down to the shell. The Merritt-Brown gearbox was one of the key items that made the tank so special. It was taken apart along with the tracks and all the controls. The tank would then be rebuilt and we would retire to the classroom to discuss the detail of what we had done. The 80

engine was never taken apart, only removed, as all engine work was undertaken by Rolls Royce, who returned the engines complete and ready for installation. It was in fact the Merlin engine that had powered the spitfire and was massively de-rated for the job of powering the Centurion.

There was then a written test and a feedback session, always most constructive. I was constantly impressed with the application and interest shown by the students. We then moved on to the favourite aspect of the course, the driving carried out on the heathland surrounding the camp. My abiding memory of this was taking the tank each morning to fuel up, and then the excitement of all piling onto and into the tank, before setting off across the heath. There can be no experience which quite compares with driving a tank and it isn’t long before you get the feeling that nothing can stop you, that the tank will go anywhere and do anything. The way to dispel this is to direct the driver to climb a steep hill; as soon as he has lost his surroundings and is looking at sky, he will invariably stop; a most disconcerting feeling, but it does the trick. A week on the heath was a great way to finish the course, with everyone coming together, the students then going off to their respective postings.

This then was my Army career. I had just about lost the chip on my shoulder but always will resent being used as cheap labour. People should be paid what they are worth. My lasting impression was of course the friendships, together with my own ability to come through the experience and learn from it. That was mine and could not be taken away.

I was discharged on Wednesday, asked to be re-employed

by Watson’s on the Thursday and started work at a large bus company, Crosville Motor Services, on the Friday. Read on.

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Chapter 7 Crosville Motor Services When I arrived at Watson’s on that Thursday morning I noticed one of the lads I had worked with waiting for spare parts at the stores counter. He told me that he thought I was still in the forces and I explained the situation to him. This was Barney Yorke, who was three or four years older than me, and an excellent mechanic. He went on to tell me that he was now working for Crosville, who had a large depot in New Ferry, not far from Birkenhead. He offered to take me back to the depot with him, explaining that there was a vacancy for a mechanic and that the money was better than Watson’s. This was music to my ears and I went back with him, met the Area Engineer who interviewed me and asked: ‘When can you start?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I replied. He told Barney to take me home and bring my tools back.

Looking back on this, it is amazing how it all came together and led on to pointing me in the direction that provided the opportunities on which I built my career. Crosville Motor Services had its roots in North Wales and Cheshire, with the Head Office and main workshop in Chester. It was a major bus operator, in fact the largest in the National Bus Company, with three depots on the Wirral, together with depots in Liverpool, Runcorn, and Warrington. This ensured that the Merseyside operation played a major role in the company’s functions, with an area engineer based at the Rock Ferry depot. This was the man who had interviewed me, always referred to as ‘me dad’ because he called everyone ‘son’. Their approach and style were somewhat old fashioned but thorough. I have to say that my time spent working there was a happy period in my life, mainly due to the people I worked with. My first 83

position was as a shift mechanic in a team of three men.

Basically this entailed operating a 24hr service, responding to breakdowns, and in addition carrying out the inspection system in force, following the company policy which included an inspection sheet signed and dated by the mechanic who had carried out the job.

The system worked with the foreman collecting the inspection sheets each day and distributing the work needed to be carried out to the rest of the workforce. This was an effective and simple way of ensuring that the fleet was kept in good condition: clearly the key man was the foreman. He needed the ability and judgment to decide what needed to be kept off the road for repair and what could safely be sent out on service. Charley Kennish was the foreman, having starting his working life with the company as a driver. This upset some people, but he did not have to repair anything and as I reflect on this I have come to the conclusion that he was in the correct job. I worked this three shift system for eighteen months alongside another job, also repairing the drivers’ cars with Barney.

I slept and had my meals at Shirley’s mum’s, where we lived. It was not a good time, indeed our worst, but if we had not dug in at that time I doubt if we would ever have been able to have moved forward as we did. Knowing this put me under a great deal of pressure, but had to be seen through.

My other job, which I was able to fit around the shift work, came from an advert I read in the local paper asking for ‘someone to overhaul engines on motor cars, ring this number!’ So I did and met one of the most interesting and funny men that came into my life. His name was George Jones and he was a partner in a second-hand car firm, called Godfrae, a name derived from the Christian names of George 84

and his partner Fred, who also ran Underpass Autos. By now you may have gathered what I was getting involved with.

They were totally different people and only met once each week. George was outgoing and rarely stopped talking; Fred was sullen and kept himself to himself, spending all of his working hours in Underpass Autos. George spent his time in the office and workshop located under the Birkenhead market, where he had asked me to meet him to discuss the job. He had more or less developed his own language; for example, stove, orchestra, and blood-pressure referred to heater, radio and oil pressure when he was selling a car to a customer. Fortunately I could understand most of what he was saying, so we got on well. He explained to me that all he wanted me to do was make sure the engines in the cars they sold were sound and would last the sales guarantee out. So that is what I did and we never had any problems. He always allowed me to decide what was needed to ensure the engine met his guarantee.

I worked for George after I had finished my nightshift at Crosville. He had given me a set of keys so I could let myself in just after 6.00 am where I would work for a few hours before going home to get some sleep. When I needed my money I simply asked and he paid in cash without questioning me about hours or any other aspect of the job. I would always go right to the bank and deposit the money. Slowly it mounted up until I had enough money to put a deposit on a house. This took eighteen months but was so worthwhile. Once all the paperwork had been dealt with, I had a word with George and we parted company as friends.

An opportunity for me to move onto day work at Crosville also came my way at this time and I was delighted to accept the offer. I could just about afford to take it, so I reasoned that 85

it was a chance to have a more normal way of life and get myself fit enough to play football again, which would bring in some money to ease our financial position. We moved into 32 Tilstock Avenue, New Ferry in September. By this time Shirley had presented me with another daughter, a beautiful little dark-haired girl with flashing eyes, loved by everyone who met her. We called her Elizabeth; she was as dark as Sarah was fair and together they looked a real picture. Life was starting to look good and we were very happy. The life we had planned together and talked about suddenly had some substance.

The routine of day-work made me feel so much better: your body never gets use to shift work. After a few weeks I started training two nights a week, then stepped it up to three.

It was hard work but it got me fit. I trained at the Oval in Bebington, only a short walk from our house across New Ferry Park. It took me six weeks to get into condition to play a full game, but before I had the chance to approach a club an opportunity came my way that enabled me to play. A new traffic manager had been appointed at head office in Chester, John Hargreaves, who decided that such a large company as Crosville should have a football team and represent the company in the competition open to all bus operators. It was called the Butlin Trophy. The Board backed him and trials were held across the company to select a team. This was my opportunity and an ideal way to feel my way back into playing. After the trials were completed, John Hargreaves asked me to captain the team. It was the perfect way for me to get going again, that is until ‘me dad’ got involved. All the games were played on Wednesdays and the idea of me having the day off and getting paid were an anathema to him. He sent for me and tried to talk me out of playing.

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‘Now look son, I know you would rather be at work than kicking a bladder about,’ was his starting point. I replied that I had been asked to represent the company and did not wish to cause any problems, to which he responded with: ‘Just you leave this to me son.’ That Saturday morning John Hargreaves and the chief engineer arrived unannounced at Rock Ferry depot. I was sent for after they had been in ‘me dad’s’ office for half an hour. The chief engineer welcomed me in and explained that they had been discussing my situation with Mr Dodd, and that he (Mr Dodd) would now put me in the picture, so that there were no misunderstandings. After what seemed to be a lifetime ‘me dad’ told me that there had been a bit of a problem but it was now all cleared up, then added: ‘You will be playing football when selected.’ It almost choked him. We did very well in the Butlin Trophy, winning the league. John Hargreaves became a good friend to me and after suffering a heart attack recovered to join National Bus in a senior role.

My work now took on a more specific aspect. There were five different engine types powering the vehicles that ran out of the Rock Ferry depot. This also applied to the other five depots in the Merseyside group. Most of the engine work was undertaken at our depot. The man who held all this together was John Campbell, whose ability and output can only be described as phenomenal and I do not use that word lightly. I spent almost the whole of my working life in and around vehicle workshops and never saw anyone who could be held in comparison with him. There was nothing else in his life only work: single and living with his parents he was in my view 'God’s gift to Crosville’. I will forever be in his debt for the help and advice he gave and showed me, as I now began to overhaul engines, week in, week out.

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I have touched on the company’s approach to inspection and safety. In addition to this, the statutory legislation then in place allowed vehicle examiners, appointed by the Ministry of Transport, to enter any premises at which buses were kept and examine the vehicles. The usual arrangement was for the local examiner to agree with the bus company to examine a set number of buses each week; this resulted in all the vehicles being examined over a twelve month period. At our depot, this worked out at three each week. Our examiner was Les White and I got to know him quite well, working with him as he examined the vehicles. I came to the conclusion that he had a good job. I have to say he was very helpful to me; I was twenty-five and maybe a little too young. Nevertheless he encouraged me to write and send my qualifications off with the letter. This resulted in an invitation to Berkley Square, then the headquarters of the Ministry. I could hardly believe it. I can still remember walking up Regent Street. Then there was the interview, which I enjoyed. I thought I had done all that was asked of me answering all the questions and expressing opinions when invited to do so.

Two weeks later Shirley appeared in the garage with the children, which she had never done before, to tell me that I had been offered a job in the Yorkshire Traffic Area, based at Sheffield. When I had recovered, the foreman let me go and tell Les White, who was as pleased as I was. He told me he had a friend in Leeds who he would write to, Leeds being the head office of the Yorkshire Traffic Area.

This train of events once more presented me with a number of problems that needed to be prioritised; as ever finance was top of the list. I needed a car in order to do the job, also to sell my house and find one in Yorkshire. Sarah was at school, with Liz almost ready to start and Shirley was 88

expecting again. What! Yes my family continued to grow. My final month at Crosville was most pleasant. John Campbell (JC) helped me out with some money to buy a car; it was a side-valve Morris Minor, the first model they made and much sturdier than the later versions. I was allowed to bring it into the workshop and literally took it apart and rebuilt it, replacing the vulnerable parts as necessary. This was all done in my own time and of course JC helped me: we even rebuilt the engine. The last day at work was very nostalgic and as the photograph shows, they kept me working to the bitter end in true Crosville tradition; they got their money out of me. Ted Rooke, our hard working union rep, presented me with some tools the maintenance staff had bought for me. I was most grateful and said so. I would never work with a better group of people.

Also I missed the final game of the season the following week. John Hargreaves, Crosville’s Traffic Manager, took the trouble to write and thank me for my contribution to the game and sent me an individual trophy. I actually started work in Leeds on the day of the match, but it was very kind and typical of the man to remember me in this way.

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Last day at Crosville

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Chapter 8 I Join the Ministry With Crosville now behind me I set off for Leeds, having been requested to report to the Traffic Commissioner’s office in the Headrow at 10.00 am on the 13th of April 1964. I went over to Leeds on the Sunday and stopped off at the Bridewell in the city centre to see if they could recommend a decent place to stay. They were most helpful, sending me to a small but very comfortable hotel used by their staff. The next morning, on the way to my appointment, I thought back to Burnley, remembering that same feeling of going into the unknown; it gave me a lift and I was ushered into a waiting room. There I came face to face with Tom Stratford, a Sheffield lad who had also been successful in obtaining a position as a vehicle examiner.

We immediately hit it off. Tom had been offered a post in Bradford and shared my apprehension in making this great leap into the unknown. We were able to reassure one another.

Eventually we were seen by the clerk who, after welcoming us to the traffic area, took us to be kitted out with dust-coats, torches and all kinds of forms related to the job we would eventually be doing. The high point in this entire preamble came when we were issued with a warrant card and then most solemnly asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. I was taken to an office in which three much older, serious looking men acknowledged me and indicated a desk for me to sit at.

Tom was taken off in another direction and eventually sent on to Bradford. One of the serious men gave me a copy of the Construction and Use Regulations and suggested that I may wish to read it, since it contained a lot of information that I would need to know in order to carry out my duties. I could 91

hardly understand a word and was starting to think about getting my job back at Crosville, when a very tall and very Scottish man appeared. ‘Are you Mr Nelson?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well a friend of yours and mine has written to me and asked me to look after you.’ This was John Low, an Aberdonian and the chief vehicle examiner. He looked, and sounded human. He informed me he was going to Dewsbury to examine some buses and would I like to go with him to help. ‘Yes,’ I replied. During the trip he talked to me and reassured me that things would soon drop into place; he had made arrangements for me to travel down to Sheffield on Wednesday and asked if I wanted to spend Tuesday with him.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

On returning to the Leeds office to collect my bits and pieces I had the good fortune to encounter Bill Liversedge, who was a vehicle examiner in Barnsley, and had just called into the office. He was so friendly and asked me where I was staying. When I told him he simply said: ‘No you’re not, you’re coming home with me.’ This was a wonderful gesture, and as I was to discover over the years that followed, so much like Bill. Home we went, and that is how I came to meet Betty, Bill’s wife. Between them they made me feel so at home and as I set off for Sheffield on the Wednesday morning I had my head sorted out and looking forward to whatever awaited me.

Before I leave this part of my story I should expand a little on the three silent men I referred to above. They were senior vehicle examiners; each one had eight or nine vehicle examiners reporting to them. I never did find out or understand what their job was or should be, in spite of asking several people. I’ll try to shed a little more light on their function as we move on; the one we had in Sheffield was a 92

complete mystery to me, as you will see, as the record of my time in Sheffield unfolds.

The Sheffield office was located in the south end of the city, just off London Road, in Sharrow Lane. The buildings were old, always known as Sharrow Lane School. I made my way there and arrived after negotiating my way across the city, which was still a major steel manufacturer in those days; a rather compact city built on seven hills with a fine river flowing through its centre, the Don. The office staff consisted of five vehicle examiners, including me, and three traffic examiners: they checked drivers’ hours and vehicles for overloading. It was a busy thriving office, to which I brought my Liverpool accent. I mention this since it was 1964 and the Beatles had exploded onto the scene: every time I spoke people would stop and look at me; it was quite unnerving. Ken Graham, who came from Durham and now lived in Sheffield, gave me the name Jimmy Tarbuck, which I did not mind. Ken was the kind of person who would always help anyone and I remained friends with him all his life, well worth listening to and good at the job. Our ‘father figure’ was Maurice Lindgard, a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire man, who appeared to know everyone in Sheffield involved in transport. He also had the telephone on his desk. The remaining and third vehicle examiner was Bill Harrison, who was a regular visitor to the Polish Club and a little too fond of the vodka, but totally harmless. He also ran the tea fund. Brian Andrew completed our team, and like me was a Grade 3, but had been in post for some six months. Andy, as he was known, was a bit of a favourite, but knew what he was talking about; and there you have it.

The following day our boss, senior vehicle examiner Maurice Littlewood, arrived: genial, smiling and very sharp.

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He had a stack of shirt boxes under his double chin, taken from the boot of his car, a new Morris Oxford. He was at once likable and outgoing, talkative and rather like your favourite uncle. I have to say that he never did anything that upset me or adversely affected my career; he simply astounded me by the way he went about the job, breaking every rule in the book and getting away with it. Maurice lived in Holmfirth, a beautiful village hidden away in the Pennines above Huddersfield, which became famous in the TV programme, Last of the Summer Wine, but was unknown then. His day-today responsibilities were the supervision of the staff based in Barnsley, Wakefield, Chesterfield, and Sheffield. He also spent at least one day a week in the head office in Leeds. We all sent in a journal on a weekly basis that was an account of our work, together with our expenses claimed to carry out this work.

Maurice processed these documents and could not be faulted in any aspect of the work he was expected to do. Tom Stratford and I often remarked that if he had put all of his energy and obvious organisational skills into the job, he would have been the Minister at least!

But as I reflect and look back at these events I do remember the Chairman of the Traffic Commissioners, Major Eastwood, running a Rover 75 car painted in the exact colours of the major coach operator in Leeds, Wallace Arnold – some coincidence! An important point to make at this stage is the fact that a large number of the original staff that had been appointed in the 1930’s were just about coming to the ends of their careers, and I’m sure that they would have been confused at seeing someone as young as me being appointed to a job that they considered to be built on a bed-rock of experience and authority. I was looking at them, trying to come to terms with the up-to-date vehicle design and 94

technology. It did not promote a harmonious workforce and things got rather strained at times. We, the younger element, were inclined to joke and laugh it off, but they even saw this as an erosion of the post’s authority. Taken all round, it was not so bad and we only had one real problem in our group, a man from the Wakefield office. How he had been given the job was a mystery.

Back in Tilstock Avenue, all was going well and I had a buyer for our house. Shirley and I had decided to delay our move until after she’d had the baby. This took the pressure off at the Sheffield end. By now I had contacted my old army mate John Gordon, who had introduced me to his football team, for whom I started playing. It was the end of the season, with about six games to go and I played in all of them. I had also found some good digs to stay in at the north end of the city at Birley Carr, with Mrs Bradshaw, with whom I became great friends. She was a wonderful cook and looked after me like one of her own; she had three daughters, all married, and over the years that followed I began to feel like one of the family.

Maureen, the youngest, lived in the next village going north and I eventually bought a house there, so as the story unfolds her family will feature, as we became very close friends.

Our third daughter, Laura, was born on 10th of June 1964.

Sarah was by then five and Elizabeth was three. When we all set off in my small car for Sheffield, they were all crying, set off by Shirley. It got so bad that I had to stop the car to let them calm down. I promised them all that I would bring them home one day and on 8th August 1969 I did just that. However, we did have five really good years in Grenoside and made some wonderful friends, as I will go on to explain.

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Chapter 9 Sheffield and Stanmore Our house was situated just off the main Sheffield to Leeds road. It was then a typical Pennine village: stone houses, village school, pub, church and three shops, who all delivered their goods to the door. This was very much appreciated by Shirley, who had her hands full with the children. We were very happy there, with good neighbours and Maureen, Mrs Bradshaw’s daughter, always on hand if help was needed. I quickly settled into my job and the layout of the city. I had been asked to go to Rotherham to help Tony Wilson, who was the vehicle examiner there and he asked me to take on the corporation bus fleet. They were all Bristol buses, an old fleet, but well looked after. It was like being back at Crosville and enabled me to overcome the fact that I was so young, dealing with older men in charge of the fleet. This became my Friday job, and once I had gained Tony’s confidence, he asked me to go across and help him out on Mondays as well; the other three days were taken up with checking the condition of goods vehicles in service on the road. We set up these checks with the police, who we needed to be able to stop the vehicles; the mechanical condition of them appalled me. Our job was to examine them as best we could at the side of the road and if, as was so often the case, we found defects that rendered them unsafe, prohibit them from moving. As you can imagine, this resulted in all kinds of problems, least of which was the fact that the policeman would issue both the driver and the company with a summons and prosecution. This resulted in the vehicle examiner having to attend court to give evidence substantiating the police prosecution. It came as quite a shock to me and could prove quite unnerving. There was no 97

training; you turned up and were thrown to the wolves: solicitors and the like. Fortunately the vast majority of these cases were taken in the magistrates’ court, where you at least had some protection given by the clerk, who ran the show, keeping the smart alecks in check. Over a six to seven month period this activity would build up and you could find that you were spending a fair amount of time in court. Looking back on these events it is easy to see this as the build up to the introduction of the annual test for these vehicles and the system that I became so very involved with; it was all just round the corner.

During 1966, Maurice Littlewood asked me if I would consider going to work at Chesterfield for a while and I jumped at it. Bob Kerr, who was the most senior man in post, needed to take some time off. I shared my office in Saltergate with the driving examiners, who always had a fund of funny stories that went with the job. Driving tests could be hard and dangerous work in those days; we took the bus drivers for their tests and the job was shared out. In spite of this, the older examiners always had some pressing reason for not being able to make it. The result was I got more than I wanted: a strong nerve was required as you found yourself standing in the bus behind the candidate, the window having been taken out to enable you to give the driver his directions and instructions. A young man in Sheffield had bought an old Leyland double-deck bus and started a business up called Nasmith’s. I immediately christened it ‘the wall of death’.

After a few driving tests, I came to the conclusion that it had to go, I decided to tell him that we needed to examine the bus to ensure that it was in good condition and up to the job, throwing in that we would not charge him for the 98

examination. We never saw him again and my health improved overnight.

Back in Chesterfield things were going well and the experience of me running an area was to prove priceless.

However I did start to understand why Bob Kerr was so content, as I drove through the Hope Valley and around Chatsworth each week. The Derbyshire Peak District is such a beautiful place and getting paid to work there was indeed a privilege. However all good things do come to an end; Bob returned after six months. I’d made another friend and within weeks of returning to Sheffield received an invitation to attend a promotion board. It was a wonderful feeling; my first thought was: ‘Has Tom Stratford been asked?’ He had and so had Brian Andrew. We had all got through. I ended up in Barnsley and Tom had accepted Pontefract; this meant that we would have areas adjacent to each other. Brian stayed in Sheffield, taking over from Bill Harrison.

When the new football season started John Gordon and I decided to change teams and we went to play for Hallam FC, one of the oldest clubs in the country.

They had completely refurbished their changing rooms and installed a big bath, as good as anything I had seen. The coach was the former Sheffield Wednesday player Dougie McMillan, who I considered to be a remarkable man, making his debut for Wednesday at seventeen. On the way back from the away game at Arsenal one of the players had asked him to change the radio on to a different programme. Dougie had walked to the front of the coach and stepped down onto the entrance steps in order to change the radio, just as the bus went round a sharp bend onto a patch of black ice and off the road. He lost his right leg from above the knee. He was in his late twenties when I started to play for him; his passion for 99

the game, together with a competitive nature, stood out: he made us into a good team. I was now twenty-nine and he asked me to move up into the forward line as we had too many good midfield players. To my amazement it worked: I started to score goals again and that’s what it is all about.

Meanwhile I had started in my new post at Barnsley, a mining town of some repute. The office was situated in Sackville Street, off the Huddersfield Road, in a row of large Victorian houses known as Providence Villas. Once more I was in with the driving examiners, but with my own office. On the end of the row stood the offices of the South Yorkshire Miners, housing Arthur Scargill, who appeared to spend a great deal of his time standing on the steps of his office addressing large numbers of working men. At that time there were twenty-six pits in and around Barnsley. Clearly mining dominated the town and its economy and as the weeks passed I developed a deep respect for the miners and their attitude to life.

Barnsley was a town full of characters, one of whom I met on my way to work the first morning I started there. I had just turned into Upper Sheffield Road when coming towards me was a medium-sized lorry laden with coal. I could see the driver struggling to steer it as he turned off into one of the side roads. I followed him in and pulled up in front of his stationary vehicle. He was undoing the tail board of the lorry ready to drop a load of coal outside the house, when I approached him. He noticed me and stepped back. I most politely said to him: ‘I think that you have a problem with your steering,’ to which he replied: ‘What the f---- has that got to do with thee?’ I began to walk to the front of the lorry and at the same time explained in simple terms what my job was.

Putting my head under the front wing I could see that all the 100

nuts and bolts that had once attached the steering box to the vehicle had gone. The box was just sitting on the chassis. By now he was quite agitated, but I managed to persuade him to take a look and he at once saw the problem. I told him to drop his load and then took a risk by asking him to follow me to the main agent which was close by. The whole steering needed attention and I told him that I would be at the main bus works all day on Wednesday, when I would check the steering over again. He turned up at the bus works and was most affable telling me: ‘It were like drivin’ a Rolls Royce.’ Then he told me if I ever needed any coal to just give him a ring and he would let me have it ‘same as miners.’ He was in fact the home coal delivery driver. There is a sequel to this tale that I will come to later.

Life in Barnsley got better and better: I felt so at home there and we even began to shop on a Saturday morning with all the girls in tow. There was a big open market each Saturday, which sold everything. The only downside was that it was on Maurice’s door step, but I tried to put this to one side and get on with the job. One valuable lesson that came out of this was that I started to keep accurate records and always kept a carbon copy with the date on. Thank you, Maurice.

I had been in post at Barnsley for about twelve months when we were all called into the Sheffield office; one of the senior engineers was coming up from London to talk to all the staff. The main gist of his talk was that change was on the way and he talked about setting up a technical training school in an effort to bring some sort of common approach to our work.

Also, there was to be a new approach to heavy goods vehicle testing; at last the juggernaut was starting to move. I came away with a view that opportunity was in the air.

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It was about this time that Shirley decided that she wanted to learn how to swim, so with Maureen, her best friend, she enrolled at Chapeltown baths and off they went every Tuesday night. I sat and read – library books mostly – the library service was of the mobile variety in our small village and chatting to the lady I asked if she could suggest anything funny to read. This is how I came to discover PG Wodehouse – pure gold dust. I do believe that he does change your life and I have read all of his books, as well as collecting most of them.

Shirley also learnt to swim, which she so enjoyed.

My mind would not settle down after the meeting in Sheffield. I needed more information and then right out of the blue we had a circular sent round asking if anyone was interested in training, with a view of going on to work in the training school, once it had been set up. This was the whiff, and I did not want to miss it. You may well ask why after only being in the job for three years and establishing myself in my own area did I need or want to move into uncharted waters.

The voice in my ear kept telling me that change was inevitable and the best way to adapt was to ‘get on the bus’. This I did by applying for a place on the training course referred to above.

To cut a long story short it all culminated with an offer to work in the technical training school on detached duty that was to be set up in Stanmore, Middlesex. After talking it over with Shirley I took the offer. This was a most important moment in my career, pivotal in that I received a most thorough training in the new system planned for the testing of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), as well as being given the opportunity to contribute to the system.

On a personal level I need to acknowledge that without my wife’s willingness to support me in this, it would never have happened. She gave me total support and in fact another 102

daughter, Lucy, my favourite as a child, was born in Sheffield on 26th November 1965.

I started at Stanmore on 30th October 1967, to be met by Bill Liversedge, who, like me, had applied for a job there. We were in lodgings together for the best part of eighteen months and became very close friends until Bill’s untimely death in 2011. Our landlady was indeed a wonderful find, a French lady who made us feel as if we belonged there, and a superb cook into the bargain. Mrs Brooks had married a British soldier who had walked into her family’s café during the hostilities following the invasion of Normandy. She had told Bill and me the story of their meeting during one of the many conversations we had with her. We also noticed that there were lots of framed photographs of young men and women in all of the rooms wearing military uniform. This intrigued me to the point of asking her who they were and her answer astonished me. ‘They were all resistance officers who had been dropped into Europe behind enemy lines to undermine the Nazi war effort.’ Mrs Brooks’ connection with them was that she had worked in London for General de Gaulle, sending out the messages in French to the resistance – a vital link in the chain and here she was cooking my breakfast and dinner each day. I can never watch ’Allo ’Allo! without thinking about her and smiling, as indeed she would have done had the programme been running then. Shades of John le Carré and Smiley’s People.

It’s sometimes hard to believe, or is overlooked, when ordinary people do extraordinary things, but they do, and this is a classic example of a lady doing just that. From that time on I had a spring in my step whenever I left Dean’s Lane to walk to the office each morning, past Edgware station and 103

then onto Edgware Road, only one mile to Stanmore and the school.

The Stanmore office and training school were situated on London Road and consisted of six classrooms, an assembly room and a large cloakroom. Across the corridor there was a large open plan office, an office for our esteemed clerk Malcolm Augustine, a larger office for our leader Ken Horner, and a large paper-store, all part of a complex known as government buildings. The open plan office was home to Bill and me, along with Tony Wilson of Rotherham fame and George Alvy, who originated from Cornwall; a big man, gentle, very knowledgeable, with a great sense of humour. Both Malcolm and George lived locally. Ken Horner, Bill, Tony, and I found lodgings in Dean’s Lane, Edgware. We were the original permanent staff, along with Peter Williams; he was based at Hendon in Aerodrome Road, directly opposite the Police Training College. Peter and I became good friends, due to my involvement with the brake testing aspect of the test.

I spent one week at Hendon and two weeks at Stanmore.

Hendon had been set up as a testing centre, where we were able to install and test the various types of equipment on trial as we began to explore the best format to employ, along with which equipment was easiest to use and gave the most accurate results. This was the most interesting time, things changing on a daily basis, as we thrashed out the best way forward. Time was running out, as the starting date of the first course rushed towards us. The arguments went on with raised voices heard on a regular basis in the Green Man public house. At last the great day arrived and we were off: over the next twelve months the whole of the department’s technical staff, regardless of their grade or standing, came through the school and took the course. We had worked nonstop; Bill and 104

I did not have a day off during that period. Alongside this, the stations were being built, ninety-one across the country. It was a massive undertaking, the biggest the Department of Transport had ever carried out, and it worked.

Prior to leaving Stanmore, we all got together in Ken Horner’s office at the request of our top man, CC Toyne: we had seen a lot of him during this busy time and he wanted to thank us. I had got to know him well due to his interest in the types of brake-testing equipment we were using; he was a regular visitor to Hendon. After a short talk, he surprised all present by asking those of us not staying on where we would like to be located. I could have gone back to the Wirral as the area vehicle examiner (same job as the one I left in Barnsley), or as station manager at Wallasey testing station. I picked the station; a choice that Mr Toyne endorsed. Bill went back to Leeds, George took a job in Bristol, Tony and Ken decided to stay at the school, being so very hands on. Peter also stayed at Hendon.

I rang Shirley right away and she was thrilled to bits – home at last! She rang me back next day to say the house was on the market, one job less to do at the weekend. There were still a few loose ends to tie up at the school but the intensity had gone. With the school now just ticking over, Ken asked me if I would be willing to come down and help out for the odd week if they needed me and I agreed to do this for him. The next few weeks were spent working in London, living in Sheffield and looking for a house in Wallasey. We eventually found a beautiful old Victorian detached house in Wallasey village, five hundred yards from the sea, a railway station that put you in Liverpool in twenty minutes at the end of the road, and good schools for the children close by. We moved in on 8th August 1968, so very happy, with our parents there to see 105

us. I felt that all the hard work and risks had been so worthwhile. Of course, the big plus was now my family; Sarah was nine, Liz seven, Laura four and Lucy almost three. Shirley adored the house and had such plans and ideas for it but, alas, we had no money.

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Stanmore Staff

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Best of friends - Bob and Jean, 1959

Sarah and Liz. Just moved into Grenoside 108

Laura and Lucy. Grenoside 1966

Stanmore 1967. 29, World at my feet. Broke but happy 109

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Chapter 10 Home to Turmoil and Change I reported to Mr Butcher, who ran the North West Traffic Area, on the following Monday morning. We got on like a house on fire; he told me how much he admired Les White and how he remembered me from the Crosville days. He then gave me a letter from the chief engineer thanking me for my contribution over the past twelve months and how he thought this should be put on the record as work well done. I asked him what he wanted me to do, since the testing stations were not ready and he suggested that I should go home and take some time off, in view of not having any since last year. He intimated that he was expecting a new man to start shortly, who would be given the job of running the testing stations and that as soon as he started he would get him to ring me. So that is how we left it. I returned home and guess what; I started to get fit, having not played all last season. I started running on the beach and swimming in the sea; this went on for five weeks until I received a phone call from a Mr Neville Jones. Would I meet him at Wrexham testing station on the following day?

Jack Thomas, a good friend of mine and ex-Crosville colleague, had been appointed as station manager for Wrexham. However his back had been hurt and he was confined to lying on a board until further notice. It was put to me over the phone that Mr Butcher wanted the station open in two weeks and was planning an open day event for that day. I drove out to LLay the following day to meet Mr Jones; it was close to where my granddad had walked me all those years ago: I was playing at home or so I thought!

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Neville Jones had been employed by the Department of Transport as Area Mechanical Engineer to oversee the installation and operation of the HGV testing stations in the North Western Traffic Area. He was an excellent engineer, qualified in both a mechanical and electrical capacity, and had in fact designed the very machine that we had purchased for use in all our stations. I recognised him from Hendon and the visits he had made there when the trials were in progress.

I arrived at Wrexham, which was a new station built on a green-field site. All the staff had been taken on and had in fact been sitting around for two weeks waiting for someone to come along and give them some information, direction and instruction. Not a satisfactory situation and I was in the thick of fielding questions, to which I did not have the answers, when Mr Jones turned up. He thanked me for coming to meet him, and explained to the long-suffering staff that he needed to talk to me for a few minutes, and then excused us as we went into an adjacent office to talk. Once there he simply repeated the information he had given to me on the phone, i.e. the date of the open day and the fact that we needed to have everything in place for this date. I made it clear that my understanding of ‘we’ was both of us, but he was clear in emphasising that he needed to be back in Liverpool to attend a meeting, asking me to keep him informed of ‘how things were going’. He then drove away.

The department needed managers to manage the difficult changes that lay ahead. These situations kept on happening, constantly exposing our inability to manage our business and will become evident as the story moves on. That afternoon I sat down with all the staff and drew up what would now be called a business plan on how we would proceed to meet our deadline date. Everyone was involved. I also spoke with my 112

mate in Hendon, Peter, who was able to direct his mobile ‘fixit squad’ to call in and give our efforts a thorough check on the following Wednesday. This gave us eight days to complete our work. It’s wonderful what can be done once everyone is pulling together. The opening day went well, with a good turn out by the local hauliers, keen to see how this great leap forward would impact on their business. I had arranged refreshments across the road at the Miners’ Welfare Club, who did us proud and it all went very well. Mr Butcher was delighted and took me to one side to thank me; it was clear that the relationship between him and Neville was not as it should be, but I left it, not bothering with him in any way. Jack Thomas made it and was back on his feet. As I drove out of Wrexham that afternoon I felt very satisfied.

Compulsory testing did not begin until October 1968 and it was still summer. Wallasey had fallen behind schedule, being a conversion, i.e. the department had agreed to rent two bays from the local bus company. Being so close to the sea, the builder was having great difficulty with the foundations. They could not build the inspection pits because the soil was mostly sand, which kept on collapsing. This meant I was still more or less on gardening leave; it came as a surprise when Mr Butcher rang and asked me to go out to Caernarfon and ‘do a Wrexham’, as he put it.

I agreed to go and found a very different situation confronting me. The local council were involved, and there were language problems. Also the station manager had not turned up from his home in Yorkshire. The station was only one lane wide and much shorter than the standard ones being built. The biggest problem was that vehicles were booked in for testing within the next four weeks. There were two staff trained to test, but no clerical support, with the manager 113

expected to provide this back-up. One of the testers, Elwyn, was a lay preacher, who had made a name for himself as a real fire and brimstone man and always had the good book with him, referring to it at a moment’s notice. His mate could not have been more different and liked a pint; no problem there I hear you say! No, the real trouble started the following week when the station manager turned up, a Jehovah’s Witness. All hell was let loose; lunch break was unbearable with both of them quoting from their font of all knowledge. I issued an ultimatum, all books with the exception of the testers’ manual to be locked away.

My Crosville background came in useful in that the local depot manager had been a trainee at Rock Ferry when I worked there and remembered me coming out to start his car.

He always flooded the carburettor and the car would not start, but by the time I got there it had dried out and always started first time for me. This used to drive him mad; he simply did not understand vehicles. The fact that I had work for Crosville always meant a great deal in Wales, and I was well looked after. We opened up on time and I stayed for the first week. We completed the testing programme and all went well. The week after I came back to Wallasey the Caernarfon manager had closed the station on Thursday, moving the tests to the following day, whilst he went off to knock on doors trying to add to the numbers of latter-day saints, having told Elwyn that the end of the world was nigh. A recipe for disaster; he had to go. He went back to Yorkshire and eventually left the department, and I had learnt a very important lesson related to working in that part of Wales that was to help me some years later when I found myself again trying to solve problems in this location.

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Having returned, I began to get involved with Wallasey and the more I looked at it the less I liked what I was getting into.

I arranged to meet up with the man who had been allocated the technical officer’s post and was not impressed when he indicated to me that he thought the testers’ manual was a load of rubbish. Not a good start, but as the weeks passed by it became clear that Alf Carmichael had a lot on his plate, and indeed he did, so my prime concern became one of how to look after him, which is precisely what I did. The main catchment area for any station on the Wirral Peninsula was going to be Ellesmere Port, where all the major oil and petroleum companies had located, adjacent to Shellmex, along with their big fleets of petrol tankers. On the opposite side of the river, facing this sprawling industrial complex was another ICI plant at Runcorn; their tankers carried a range of nasty chemicals and all of these vehicles had to travel down the peninsula, then through a built up area to reach the station, which we shared with a busy bus fleet. The testing station should have been built in or near to Ellesmere Port. As if that was not bad enough, the short approach road to the testing lanes (two) was shared with the Water Board, Electricity Authority, and the Wallasey Corporation refuse collection service, all of whom ran vehicles. The logistics of trying to make it work, let alone run smoothly would have tested the patience of Job, as indeed it did mine, as well the manager of the Wallasey Corporation bus fleet, Gwyn Thomas.

After a great deal of thought I have come to the conclusion that the least said about the staff the easier it will be for me to write this part of my story. There were nine members, including me, and during the five years I worked there as the manager, I was the only one who was not involved with our 115

welfare branch. I have never work so hard in my life as I did during this period. You could not define it as physical or mental, you just had to dig in and see it through, and when I now hear people saying: ‘You don’t get anywhere without hard work,’ I know precisely what they mean – I’ve been there. I was first in and last out every day without exception.

And that’s all I ever want to say about Wallasey. It scared me, and I took some time to recover. There were pluses in that I had my family around me daily, and a nice big roomy house to come home to and relax in, but I always wanted to get out of the situation I found myself in. The one shining light for me came in the form of a vehicle examiner called Bob Dutton, who came to work at Wallasey to assist the resident examiner. I formed a great relationship with Bob, who shared my sense of humour. We are still in touch and have enjoyed a real friendship. We still see each other and long may it continue.

My first attempt to escape was to apply for another job that had been advertised in the trade journal at that time. Birds Eye, a national company owned by Unilever, had advertised for a transport manager to coordinate the activities of their eight factory transport operations, together with the huge car fleet they ran for their mobile sales force. The Traffic Act had just made changes related to operators’ licensing and this had alerted the more progressive companies to consider a new approach. They gave me an interview at the head office in Walton-on-Thames, which lasted for the best part of four hours, during which time I was moved round the building and saw five different senior people. It was a strange experience in that the building was like a smaller version of the Eden Centre – waterfalls with lots of foliage and penguins wandering about. I certainly knew that I’d been interviewed.

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I did not tell anyone at work, but that evening I walked over the road to see Peter Hatchel my good friend and neighbour and talked the experience over with him: he thought I’d done well.

About a week later I received a letter from them asking me to come down again, and also inviting my wife. We set off and had a most pleasant day, much lower key with a nice lunch after which they gave Shirley a trip into Walton. I was taken to see the top man (Captain Birdseye) in his palatial office, who engaged me in conversation on a number of subjects, before eventually he turned to the job saying: ‘If you are offered this important role in our organisation, I will expect you to be like Caesar’s wife.’ He turned and looking at me, nodded his head. ‘Above reproach,’ I replied and with that he offered me the job. Shirley returned and we set off on our journey back to Liverpool. I could sense that something was wrong. As we crossed Waterloo station she quietly said to me: ‘Have you seen the price of property in and around Walton?’

I tried everything I could think of, but was unable to find a house that my family could have lived in that was affordable.

They even sent a director up to try and convince me that I was turning down a wonderful opportunity; my approach was: ‘Let me work out of the Kirkby factory,’ but they were adamant that I should be based in Walton-on-Thames.

My next opportunity to move on came when the department had a glaring weakness in their testing system, brought to their notice by the transport industry. Large companies with vehicles spread across the country were beginning to pick up variations in the standards being applied by the different stations they used. This clearly needed to be taken on board and put right. My boss at that time in the North West was Fred Whally, based in Manchester, who rang me up 117

alerting me to the fact that two posts were going to be advertised to take this problem on board and eliminate the variations. I was selected for interview and felt very comfortable with the questions, indeed the time flew past and the end of the interview took the usual format, with the chairman inviting the candidate to ask the board members about anything that they were not clear on, following their interview. I asked the chairman, DV Jones, who was also the head of our division, that I wished to make it clear that, in the absence of any location being attached to the jobs on offer, I would only be willing to work from home, in view of the fact that I had been away from my family longer than I had been with them since joining the department, adding that I hoped he understood my dilemma. He said he did, and then added that there would be occasions when the job would entail having to stay away overnight, giving Scotland as an example.

I agreed and said that this would not present me with a problem. He said good and reaffirmed that he understood why I had raised the question.

I got one of the jobs and at thirty-one years of age discovered that I was the youngest Grade 2 examiner in the job. The other man who turned up, Don Dean, was from Bishop’s Stortford. We met in Mr Jones’ office in London for our briefing, along with Bill Mitchell, who had been on the fringe of our Stanmore operation, a professional engineer with a sharp mind, but not someone you who choose to go into the trenches with. As usual with the department, there were no ideas, plans or direction to discuss. DV simply suggested that we (Don and I) go to Stanmore and return on Thursday with some ideas that would give us a way forward to eliminate, or significantly reduce, the variations. Off we went. On the way up in the car I put it to Don that if we split 118

up and both came up with ideas separately, we could put the best of our findings together on Wednesday, ready to give to DV the following day. He agreed and that is what we did. I never fail to be surprised by the things people do, so when on the Wednesday morning Don produced nothing, I challenged him and his response to me was: ‘Well I knew you would do it,’ going on to inform me that: ‘If we put our minds to it, we could make a fortune on T&S’ (travel and subsistence).

Another one to avoid in the trenches!

Thursday arrived and we once again gathered in DV’s office. I produced my four-page report, an analysis based on a four week period covering twenty-three stations, forty-five lanes and six traffic areas. DV read it through and said he was delighted with this as a starting point and instructed Don Dean to do the same for the southern stations. Then, without appearing to draw breath, he asked me when I intended to move. My initial reaction was that he was talking to someone else, but no, it was me. Looking him in the eye I told him I had no intention of moving and referred him to the conversation that had taken place when we discussed this subject at my interview. He dismissed this by saying that things had changed and he needed me on hand to discuss detail with. I came back at him, pointing out that nothing had changed for me and I was willing to provide him with information at any time he wanted to see me. This quickly escalated into a row and I was not going to back off any more than he was. I picked up all my papers, swept them into my case, and made for the door. ‘Where are you going?’ he yelled at me. ‘Back to Wallasey,’ I replied, and I left, still thirty-two and definitely the youngest Grade 2 to walk out on the job.

My parting shot was to make the point that he would not recognise the truth if he fell over it. And so it was back to 119

Wallasey for the second time, onto the treadmill. At least I was able to look people in the eye, having retained my dignity as well as demonstrating that I was not going to be pushed about. Alf had been given his transfer to Kirkby; I was so pleased for him, now much nearer to home and in the area job to which he was more suited. They had replaced him with a man who had a drink problem; by 4.00 pm he was unable to do his job and so I brought him into the office and told him: ‘I think you’re drunk.’ His response was to recoil in horror, telling me that he would not have a drink the next day. The following day it was worse; he was shaking and unable to even walk safely. We put him in the office and gave him coffee.

The following day I got in touch with the clinic in Liverpool and asked for advice. Dr Penny told me that if I brought him in they would try to sort him out. I took their advice, taking him over and then telling his wife who had been round this course so many times. It really is a dreadful illness. My next move was to contact welfare branch in London and tell them the story. Apparently I had done everything to the book and they were delighted. I asked them if they would be kind enough to let our office in Manchester know and they did; Fred was not pleased. Just as all this was breaking around me, Shirley presented me with a son, James. I can clearly remember Dr Hay, a real doctor, ringing me on a Saturday morning and telling me in his wonderful Scottish drawl: ‘You’ve got a son.’ I could hardly believe it and rushed to the maternity home to hold him; no child was ever more truly loved.

I had not even begun to lick my wounds, when the Manchester gang started to probe for my version of what had gone on. The only person I trusted there was Eric Dunn, who had come to us from the industry. He eventually went on to 120

go right to the top of the tree and deserved to do so in my view. I at least had him in my corner and he told me to just quietly go about my job, not all that easy in Wallasey. Jim was not destined to return while I was at Wallasey, so I did not see him for quite a while and ironically Fred Whally of all people had to go into hospital to have an operation on his inner ear.

While he was off I was invited to attend a promotion board, evidently DV’s wrath had subsided. I attended and passed, then accepted a job in Manchester, just as Fred returned fully fit. He rang to say how pleased he was that I had put all that trouble behind me and asked what I had in mind. I brought him up to date with my decision to accept the job offer in Manchester, at which point he became very excited and told me that he had another job in mind for me. I had my ear to the ground in Manchester and the story was I was going to the job nobody wanted at the big Liverpool station, run by the staff, or so it was rumoured. I did not ask him what he had in mind and he did not tell me. I just said: ‘I’m looking forward to coming to Manchester.’ He replied: ‘Well I’m going to change that.’ My response to this news was to inform him that, based on what he had told me, I intended contacting our national union rep to stop him from changing my posting. At this he went into overdrive telling me that if I did: ‘I was finished.’

I actually won this one, due to a friendship I had made with Bill Lacey, our national union rep, whilst playing football in Yorkshire. He was marking me in a cup game we played in Nottingham and neither of us knew that we both worked for the same outfit until we were enjoying a friendly drink after the game. As often happens in these situations, luck more than played a big part. I contacted Bill who took down all the details and told me how fortunate it was that I had caught him, as he was going to London the next day to discuss this 121

very issue during a meeting with the undersecretary about traffic areas interfering with postings made by the establishment. He promised to ring me the following evening with news of the outcome and did so. I found it hard to believe what he told me; they had allocated me a vacancy in Liverpool, based on the fact that it would not cost anything to place me there. Common sense prevailed, most unusual in the civil service. Next morning I opened a letter confirming what Bill had told me. I rang Shirley, but told nobody else. It was better than winning the pools; we were able to stay in our lovely house, seven miles from the Liverpool office in Crosby, via the Mersey Tunnel. Mr Whally rang me at work during the afternoon with a message: ‘All’s well that ends well.’ It was third time lucky for me. ‘Goodbye Wallasey, Hello Crosby.’

Sandwiched in between all of these highs and lows I must not forget the wonderful sense of humour that prevails in Merseyside, running like a conduit holding events and people together at times. One such event that has remained with me from this hectic period centres around one of the testers based at the Liverpool station at Kirkby. His name was George Jackson, known to one and all as Jacko. Occasionally, when we had a staffing shortage at Wallasey, I would ring Frank Firth up at Kirkby and he would send one of the Liverpool testers across to help out. They took it in turn to do this and Frank told me it was Jacko’s turn, but in such a way that made me question the situation. Frank eventually told me that Jacko’s car was playing up again and, unknown to him, the staff at the Liverpool station had opened a book on him getting to Wallasey in his car. The car problem had been going on for quite a while and consisted of a petrol shortage when going up an incline. Jacko’s solution had been to bind the split pipe with a roll of insulation tape, which of course started to leak, 122

but just about kept going so long as he did not have to go up any long or steep incline. The day arrived, but not Jacko. I rang Frank who was unable to stop laughing, only to shout: ‘He’s not bloody made it.’ Unable to get any sense out of him I put the phone down and walked out onto the shop floor to see the Mersey tunnel police towing Jacko and his Triumph Herald into our testing station. He had broken down on the long incline out of the Wallasey tunnel. We never found out who won the sweep in Liverpool, but the worst was yet to come, when at the end of the week he attached the summons and towing charge to his expenses claim, expecting me to sign them, his logic being if he had not been asked to go to Wallasey, he would not have broken down! He was a complete head-case. I also remember another of the testers asking him how many o’s were there in the word loose, to which his classic answer was: ‘It depends on how loose it is.’

Before I leave this period of turmoil in my life, I must return to my passion for football, which came to an enforced end with me fracturing my scull in a game played at the Oval stadium where Port Sunlight played all their home games.

Following a clash of heads with a member of my own team (he was a tunnel policeman) I was knocked out, but recovered and played on. That night my ear started to bleed and I went to my local hospital to be informed, following an x-ray, that my skull was fractured. I was kept in for two weeks and eventually signed myself out and returned to work. It took me at least six months to get back to normal. I have a letter from the doctor at the hospital telling me that my head is okay (not a lot of people have got this!). This was the only time I had off work during my thirty-seven years of working for the Ministry of Transport. Now, having reached the ripe old age of thirty-six, I had picked up my first serious injury and the 123

doctor advised me to retire. I took the advice, which seemed to fit in with the general way things had tended to go at Wallasey. Crosby, when it came along, appeared full of promise and so it proved to be. Again one door was opening as another one closed.

Chapter 11 Liverpool I started at the Crosby office in December 1973 and found myself in a modern office block, along with the usual driving examiner contingent; they were housed on the ground floor.

My office was on the second floor, which also housed the Liverpool branch of Ordnance Survey; about ten draftsmen and their boss, a very friendly bunch of people. Next door to me in a large office were two vehicle examiners, Bill Howard and Bill Hunter, who did not get on very well. Along the 124

corridor the other way, was the telephonist for the building, Joyce, who became a great help to me as I settled into the new job.

The territory I covered started just south of Preston at Much Hoole, and came down the west coast, taking in the Wirral peninsular, then across as far East as Skelmersdale and St Helens. In addition to the two men at Crosby, there were three at an office in Childwall, two at Kirkby, and two based on the Wirral in Wallasey testing station, who all reported to me. Fred Whally had briefed me with his observations, telling me that the relationship with the Liverpool police needed to be improved, and that he was unhappy with the general condition of the bus fleet. Last but not least, he thought that the staff needed to show a more enthusiastic approach to their work. Not bad for a start I thought as I came home that first day. The following week I got all nine employees to come into the Crosby office and I shared this information with them. Eight of them were from Liverpool, so the response was quite lively; this was just what I wanted. Once things had settled down a little, I also informed them that I would be visiting them ‘on the job’ regularly. This kicked everything back up into the air again, but when we all left to go home that night, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that things were about to change and that I was going to be a lot more handson than the man I was replacing. We had definitely moved on from the first day and in the right direction. This continued to be my management style, treating everyone the same, having regular group meetings where people could speak their mind, and then moving on as a group in the way we had agreed to do.

I next turned my attention to the industry, setting up regular monthly meetings with the major bus companies and 125

found that they were all most receptive to this; it was an ideal platform for exchanging views and most of all identifying problem areas. I was putting forward the idea that we were an extension of the industry, there to assist and make life easier; it was not in my interests to deny them information, the more they knew, the simpler my job became. This approach had worked for me in the testing station and I saw no reason why it should not succeed in the traffic area work.

My immediate boss was Bernard Bowness, who was approaching retirement and not very well, most pedantic and correct in all he did and a very good example to have as a man to look up to. Bernard was based in Chester with my opposite number, Tony Poole, who looked after North Wales, and together the three of us were an excellent team; we complemented each other. Tony was ten years older than me, full of energy and ideas, always on the front foot and we became the very best of friends, often meeting out of hours to chew the job over whilst having a drink or two. This was such a happy period in our life and we knew it.

My three years in the Crosby office were most rewarding and once I had settled in and developed what proved to be an excellent working relationship with my staff, we began to address some of the more serious problems in the area. There was however one exception and everyone involved will know who I am referring to and I will deal with this, as indeed I did deal with it, when I returned from Scotland. It was also a very interesting period to work in the city, always extremely political. It was now entering a period of turmoil where we would see a moderate, modest, left-winger, John Hamilton, who became leader of the Labour Group In 1973, gradually deposed, and then dominated by Derek Hatton, after labour took control of the council in 1984. Interesting times, to say 126

the least. Working in the city as I did each day, you could feel it in the air. That to me was always a big plus in Liverpool; it was alive, vibrant and different.

Our holidays were always of the tenting variety, with Bob and Jean who had four children. They have become great times to recall. It was North Wales, where the sun always shone, except on one spectacular occasion that has become legion in both family histories. Simplicity was the ingredient that made them so special, never to be forgotten times. We are still the best of friends as indeed are the children. It was around this time that I had a call from an old friend, George Jones, the best car salesman in the northwest. He offered me the use of his mobile caravan, which I checked over before setting off for Llangollen to spend two idyllic weeks in the grounds of the Abbey there. We took both cats and our Labrador dog, Roscoe, who I’ve not mentioned up until now, very much part of the family. Some days into the holiday the switch that operated the water pump failed. Further investigation revealed that it needed replacing. I found an old bus bell in my tool box that must have been there from my Crosville days, to which I super-glued a large nut, then screwed the bell to the floor and connected the wires. Push Once was written on the bell and it worked when you stood on the nut. George was beside himself when he saw it, a novel way of making the water flow. These were ‘the best times of our lives’, as the song tells us. We made our way home at the end of what had been a wonderful holiday to Wallasey and it was back to work on Monday morning.

Looking back now at my three years in Crosby, I can clearly see the complete contrast to the time I had spent at Wallasey testing station. I had become pro-active again with the support of the people around me. It was 1977; Liverpool had 127

won the league again, then lost out on the double to a really stuffy goal to Manchester United. With the ball bouncing between Smith and Greenhoff, it fell to Macari, whose shot was going wide until it hit Greenhoff’s chest and diverted into the net, wrong-footing Ray Clemence in the process. Four days later Bob Paisley took his Liverpool team to Rome to lift the European Cup for the first time in their history; it was a memory that will always be with me. These were indeed heady times, my job and my team were both on a high and the season ended with Shirley and me going to Tommy Smith’s testimonial game at Anfield. The following week I received an invitation to a promotion board interview for a vacancy in Scotland; they needed an area mechanical engineer in Perth.

We discussed the offer and after a great deal of thought accepted. I found it difficult to leave the city, however I would return a lot sooner than I imagined, somewhat wounded and a great deal wiser following my Scottish adventure. I did have my football team to keep my head up, as they were about to sign Kenny Dalglish to replace Kevin Keegan.

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Sarah

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Laura

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Lucy

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James

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Liz

Our Sue 134

Chapter 12 Scotland Although I was unaware of it at the time, this was to become one of those pivotal moments, not only in my life but also the life of my family. This situation came about when I was selected for the vacancy in Perth. I had been asked to take up post in Scotland from Monday 31st October 1977. Between this date and the interview that had taken place in July, my family situation had begun to change. Susan, a cousin of Shirley’s who had been living with us for a considerable period of time, had married and moved on. Sarah, my eldest daughter, after receiving her A-level results had taken up a post in East Lancashire, training to nurse handicapped children, which subsequently became her career. She came home each weekend and it was a comparatively easy task to find accommodation each weekend with her grandparents.

Elizabeth however presented a rather more complex picture, in that having passed eight O-levels, she wanted to go on and concentrate on music, which meant taking A-level music. I also needed to take into account her relationship with her music teacher. There were no A-levels in Scotland, only Highers, and I recall vividly spending a Sunday afternoon with her and her boyfriend, who filled me with alarm and despondency, pleading with me to allow her to stay in Wallasey. Eventually I took the view that this was her life and that bringing her with us to Scotland would have curtailed any progress in the career she wished to follow. However, this had to be balanced against her welfare; difficult to say the least. She stayed and I will always hold the image of her sitting on the wall of the house that had held so much happiness for us as a family, as I followed the van with our belongings out 135

of Regent Road, then on to Scotland. Without doubt one of the worst days of my life.

It was not only the mental strain that I had to contend with, I had for the past twenty-five weeks driven to Perth to carry out my job throughout the week, back to Wallasey for the weekend, during the worst winter on record in Scotland for the past forty-four years. To say that I was tired was an understatement. We moved into our new residence in Hillend, Perth the following day, meeting up with the furniture van that morning, then waving them away as they set off on their long journey back south. The bungalow was new and quite large. I had expected to encounter problems with the piano but it fitted in the lounge with lots of room to spare. The big plus that everyone noticed was the change in temperature. After our large Victorian house we were warm, looking out of the big lounge window at the falling snow.

Now that I’ve got the story to the point where we have moved in, I can begin to share with you what had gone on during the twenty-five week period I refer to above, and in doing so, lay out the relationship and interface going on between the three major elements that dominated my time in Scotland, how I dealt with them, together with the consequences that followed the decisions I made.

The three elements are people, work, and decisions/consequences; they sit together and can’t be separated. The people who mattered most to me were my family, and following on from the events documented above you will be aware that Sue, Sarah, and Elizabeth remained in England.

Shirley, Laura, Lucy, James and I had moved to Perth. I had arranged the schools, which in fact I did get mixed up with, but once this had been corrected the children settled in far 136

better than hoped for. The standard of education was better than the one they left behind. Shirley and I turned our attention to the garden, which needed a good deal of time and effort. I turned the whole plot over front and rear and then landscaped a circular lawn in the rear, leaving the front as lawn, shrubs and flower beds. Taken all round and given the trauma created with splitting the family, the move had gone well. However we both noticed the warmth that we had left behind on Merseyside and also experienced when we moved to Sheffield was missing. By and large the people of Perth kept themselves to themselves.

On the job front I have to go back six months and my meeting with my new boss in Edinburgh in October 1977. He was known as The Irishman, a name in which he revelled. He explained that he intended to keep me in Edinburgh for six weeks until ‘he had the measure of me.’ I asked him what it was he wished to know, since I had nothing to declare, or hide for that matter, through a forced grin which did not go down too well and threw him somewhat. An awkward situation was averted by Ken Wright, who had not long joined our organisation after leaving the army with the rank of Major. He had been asked to join us in the office by The Irishman, the idea being that Ken and I were to share an office during my stay in Edinburgh, prior to moving on to Perth. This proved to be a good move for me; we got on very well together and remained good friends long after Ken left the job to take up a position in the church. I don’t think he was ever comfortable in our job. The next six weeks were difficult, The Irishman was always trying to demonstrate his superiority and the more he did this the more his insecurity became evident. It was noticeable that some people were clearly frightened of him, uncomfortable when there was no need to be. In short he 137

created an atmosphere in which people did not wish to work, whereas the prime aim of any manager should be the complete opposite. When things did not go according to plan, it was always someone else’s fault and at the end of the six weeks it was me who had learnt far more about him than vice versa. We eventually set off for Perth, the plan being that I would leave my car there and then carry on with him to Aberdeen, spend a few days in the office where Arthur White was based with two senior vehicle examiners. A third SVE was based in Inverness; these four people together with me completed the management team for the north of Scotland.

My office in Perth strongly resembled Ronnie Barker’s cell in Porridge; the bricks had been painted a vile shade of green which did not particularly bother me since I was never really into status and posh offices, but, being honest this did push me to the edge. All the desks and cupboards were locked and the keys had vanished, The Irishman’s only comment was: ‘That’s a bit of a problem, Bob’, perhaps his first correct observation made in my presence since I’d arrived in Scotland. I asked the clerk if he would order me a complete set of keys which I would pick up on my return from Aberdeen and gave the station manager my spare car key so that he could bring my car in each night. We then set off for the far north. The trip was uneventful and as we got into his car to return to Perth on the Friday morning, he made a statement that will always stay in my mind as the one which best sums him up: ‘It’s a shame to take the money.’ We arrived in Perth to be informed that, whilst all the keys fitted, all the drawers and cupboards were empty. The phantom key-snatcher had cleaned out every scrap of information along with all the records. It was going to be a start from scratch job, which at times can be an advantage.

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Once all the dust had settled, it became clear that my role in Scotland was centred on three areas. The first was the certification of new buses built at the Glasgow Road factory of Alexander’s in Falkirk; this was the principal bus factory at that time in the British Isles, turning out twenty vehicles each week. They built the body onto the bus chassis that had been built by the manufacturer i.e. Leyland, Dennis, Volvo, Scania ECT, and delivered it to Alexander’s. My job was to examine the finished product, ensuring that it complied with all the relevant regulations prior to delivery. I carried out these examinations Wednesday and Friday every week. The factory closed for holidays on two two-week periods, during which time I would spend my time on the Northern and Western Isles, inspecting the bus fleets that served these sparsely populated areas. This was a job I inherited and a wonderful experience, travelling by plane and boat between the remote communities, meeting the people, whilst trying to understand how they lived and made a living in such difficult conditions.

They are most resourceful in both body and mind, also most hospitable. Their warmth and good humour will always stay with me as one of the high points in an otherwise difficult period in my life. The vehicles were kept in good condition and needed to be, given the harsh conditions they had to contend with, as the photographs show.

The second aspect of my job centred on the car testing scheme, known to the public as the MOT test. This was the year that our organisation introduced a major upgrade of equipment that garages would need to install, in order to continue to test vehicles. It made a major impact on the garage trade and also improved the overall condition of vehicles on the roads of the UK. 139

My third major task was to oversee the reports of maintenance visits made by the vehicle examiners to goods vehicle operators with regard to their licence to carry goods.

Again this was confined to the north of Scotland.

The mistake I made was trying to make the above chaotic shambles work. The first thing I did was to prioritise the tasks, and clearly the bus production had to take the prime role. This was an easy decision. I had for years been preaching that I considered that our function was an extension of the industry, and here I was working in a bus factory on the end of the production line. I established an excellent working relationship with a first class management team at Falkirk, led by Ray Braithwaite, who I had first met while working as a vehicle examiner in Barnsley. He was now the chief executive and managing director at Alexander’s, not only meeting the heavy demands of the UK bus industry, but also driving an expanding export of buses into China and Hong Kong, then still a British protectorate. My position there placed me right at the centre of the industry, with the opportunity to meet each week the general managers and chief engineers of all the major operators, as they visited to check on the progress of their orders. Ray always invited me to take my lunch with the visitors and his management team in the boardroom on all of my visits; this ensured that I soon became aware of what was going on in the industry and enabled me to be much more a part of it.

So much so, that I was offered a job with Hong Kong Motor Bus with Ray’s backing; an excellent package, which included the children’s education. Shirley would not hear of it for reasons that I will go into later, but I’ve always wondered: What if?

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Gradually, I began to get to know the staff and the key people with whom I would be working. Then one morning, without any warning, two of the management team brought up the subject of Burnley FC and after a brief discussion Jimmy McFee, who ran the drawing office, explained that he had in fact managed Falkirk FC. Following a long and distinguished career as a player, he further explained that he was still very good friends with the former first team trainer at Burnley during my time there. Jimmy had also played at Preston FC and always wore the Preston badge in his lapel.

We spoke for a while about various people we both knew in the game and then the other man, Alex Weir, said he would like to introduce me to, as he put it, ‘a gentleman’ and I followed him through the factory to where an engineer was fitting a fuel pump to a Gardner diesel engine, a job I’d often done in my Crosville days. Alex then turned to me and said: ‘I’d like to introduce you to Mr Dalglish.’ ‘Are you Kenny’s dad?’ I asked him and he confirmed that he was. For once in my life I was lost for words and did not quite know what to say. Both Jimmy and Alex were amused by my predicament.

Eventually I was able to reply to Mr Dalglish, and more in fun I asked him If Kenny needed anything, since I went home each Friday. We were all standing about laughing, when Mr Dalglish remarked: ‘Well yes there is, he needs some cream soda; it’s white in England and he wants the green stuff that tastes better.’

Returning to my digs that night, I had a word with the son of my landlady, who by chance drove the local Irn Bru lorry, asking him if he could see his way to letting me have a crate of the ‘green stuff’. When I explained the situation to him, there was no problem. That Friday night I crossed the border with a crate of you know what in my boot. The following day, 141

Liverpool were playing at home. I made my way to Bob Rawcliff’s garage in Knotty Ash, where I left the crate for Kenny to pick up. Bob’s garage was at that period used by all the Liverpool players: he serviced their cars and if they needed to change them he found them what they wanted. Bob Paisley even ordered the club cars through him. I always looked out for Kenny’s dad at half time and I think his name was Bill. He came to quite a lot of the home games. Like Kenny he was a nice man and I think of him whenever I go north, as I pass Cumbernauld.

My second priority had to be the MOT upgrade, because of the business link. I was particularly aware of the financial pressures placed on the small rural garage, of which Scotland had more than its share. In reality they had no choice; their businesses centred on the testing scheme and so they had to go for the upgrade. Given the number of garages I inspected during this period, I was amazed that I only had one unpleasant incident and I feel that it’s well worth recording.

I received an application for an update from a garage in Kinloch Rannoch a somewhat remote, small settlement that lay between Loch Tummel and Loch Rannoch, as the song tells us: ‘the road to the Isles’. I arrived there to find a pristine garage and workshop owned by two brothers, who also had the agency for Land Rover, which made a great deal of sense considering the surrounding farmland and wild, open country. This was an easy job to do, they were on the ball and I had completed the inspection within an hour. If only they could all be like this, I thought.

Before setting out I had checked to see if there were any other testing stations in this remote area. We did have one and it was not good news. A character named Jimmy Duncan, who ran one single-deck bus, had also been given 142

authorisation to test cars. I had recently been in correspondence with him over a test he had carried out and given him the benefit of the doubt, mainly based on the time factor. I did however discuss the incident with Gerry Mathews, the senior vehicle examiner in Aberdeen, who enlightened me regarding Jimmy and his bus. Apparently Jimmy had for some time now been holding the department to ransom by threatening to withdraw his service. He had the licence for one vehicle to meet the main line express service between Euston and Inverness at Rannoch Moor station. This service was frequented by some quite high-powered people, MPs and the like, which gave Jimmy his leverage, since nobody else was available in such a remote spot to take the job on. After thinking about this for a while, I decided to speak to a director in the Tayside region who controlled this area.

Alan Westwell had been an apprentice at Edge Lane bus works in Liverpool, who had worked his way up to the top. I asked him if Tayside would cover this service if Jimmy Duncan withdrew his bus and he agreed to do so. Armed with this information, I approached Jimmy to see what his views on remaining as a testing station were, in the light of the recent change in the regulations.

There could not have been a greater difference between Jimmy’s garage and the one I had left on the other side of the river; it was a shambles, all that was missing was a cockerel standing on the jack handle. Jimmy was also in an expansive mood, as he explained to me why he had no intention of spending his hard-earned money on new equipment, when the set-up he had did the job. I once more explained that he had no option if he wished to continue testing under the new regulations. He now had attracted an audience, which he enjoyed. It is strange how people always gather in rural areas.

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It was something I had noticed in North Wales; they tend to use buildings that stand on the main road of a village as public areas to stop and chat in, and even more so if there is a debate going on. Jimmy had just told me what I could do with ‘my new regulations’, which had gone down well with the locals; he paused to get the full benefit of their approval. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll write and tell you when your authorisation to test terminates.’ At this point, Jimmy played his ace and told me: ‘I’ll take the bus off,’ basking in the approval of the locals again, who no doubt had become used to following these cameos staged in public by Jimmy. I suggested to Jimmy that we continue our discussion inside and followed him into the garage. Once inside I explained in detail to him the alternative arrangement that was now available, emphasizing that this was a very separate issue to the one I had come to discuss with him. I asked him again to reconsider his position on the car testing scheme, underlining the impact this could have on his business. This did not register with him; he walked across the garage and took a shotgun down from the wall, then pointing the gun at me, told me to leave his premises. I was trying to work out how I had found myself in this most uncompromising position; I looked at him and asked him to put the gun down. After what felt like a lifetime a voice came from under the bus standing, on the pit: ‘You don’t come from round here,’ in a clear Liverpool accent. ‘Come out and show yourself,’ I said and, walking across to the bus, came face to face with a man I had worked with at Crosville. This broke the tension and I could feel the relief flowing through my body.

Jimmy put the gun back on the wall, insisting that we all have a cup of tea, allocating the dog’s cup to me. This only became clear when the dog sat down by me, and the petrol girl 144

indicated that I had his cup. William Shakespeare knew his stuff: ‘Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity.’

My work related to goods vehicle operator licensing was mostly confined to the office, where I drafted my recommendations for the licensing authority/traffic commissioner. Any discussion could always wait and be fitted in with my visits to their offices in Aberdeen and/or Edinburgh. The only time that I could sit undisturbed in my office was on a Saturday when the phone was off and nobody else was in, with hindsight not a good idea.

I was spending more and more time just trying to do my job. Scotland is a big country, difficult to move around in once the winter sets in and by now I was working fifteen hours each day, as well as Saturdays, and as I write this down the words are screaming at me: why did you go on doing it? But life’s not that simple, as we all discover sooner or later. In the process of keeping The Irishman off my back, my family were paying the price and it took Shirley to point this out to me.

Such was my obsession with work I failed to see what was obvious and we began to argue. It truly was a dreadful time; both isolated and blaming each other for lack of support. It took the ultimate shock to eventually bring this to a head and make me see the situation for what it was. Slowly I came to terms with what needed to be done and more importantly, acted.

I wrote to The Irishman and arranged a meeting with him at the bus works. After explaining that I had a problem that needed to be resolved, which centred on my family, it became clear that he did not want to know and on reflection I can perhaps understand why. After all it was a problem of his making. He neither asked if he could help or what the problem was. Given his complete lack of interest I came right to the 145

point and told him that in the light of his attitude, I would be making an application to transfer back to the North Western traffic area in order to reunite my family, and that it was only fair to let him know that the theme of my argument for transfer would rest heavily on his inadequate grasp of what was going on within the Scottish traffic area. Whatever else this did, it most certainly captured his interest. ‘Over my dead body,’ was his spluttered observation, to which I gave him the time honoured reply: ‘So be it.’

I took Shirley and the children home in June 1979. The other side of the coin was the most generous presents the staff gave me on leaving and the wonderful farewell meal and evening, arranged by Ray Braithwaite and his management team, at the Railway Hotel in Perth. I still go to Scotland at least once each year to see the many friends I made there. I returned to join my family in October, just as the winter began to bite. Clinging to the wreckage just about sums up the situation I found myself in, notwithstanding John Mortimer’s excellent book.

As ever in life you do need an element of good fortune to succeed in whatever it is you are trying to achieve, and so it was with my move back with my family to the North West.

Once Shirley and I had resolved our difficulties, it became abundantly clear that we needed to move back. I had made an application to move, through the official channels, only to be told that there were no vacancies. This meant looking for a job with a new company based in the North West. I found one in Ellesmere Port, with Burma Oil, who were looking for a transport manager to run their operation. I had more or less tied up all the loose ends, leaving only my resignation from the job I was doing in Perth to put in place, and I went into my office on that particular Monday morning with a heavy heart.

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As I contemplated the list of phone calls I needed to make, my phone rang, and to my surprise Mr Bownas, my old boss from Chester, was on the line. He informed me that due to his continued ill health he had decided to retire and wanted to let me know before making it official, since he would prefer me to take over from him if possible. Now that is what you call good luck. After thanking him profusely, I immediately rang our establishment division and spoke to Miss Girling, who dealt with postings, but, instead of tendering my resignation, I was now asking her to put my name on a vacancy that I informed her would soon appear at Chester. She quite rightly told me that there was no such vacancy, then after a good deal of charm and dare I say eloquence on my part, I persuaded her to pencil my name in. Two days later she rang me to say that my name was now on the vacancy, and then wrote to me in May to tell me that my starting date in the North West would be July 30th, so ending my time in Scotland, which I look back on with very mixed emotions.

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Bus test. Don’t try this at home!

Shetland Bus. Northern Isles

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Shirley and I in the Highlands, 1979

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Chapter 13 Manchester My new boss in Manchester was Ray Ball, who had previously held the post, but moved across to Leeds for family reasons. A Sheffield man by birth, he was well respected not least for his war record that had seen him extremely well-decorated, due to his involvement with the Royal Navy Russian convoy vessels. I spent my first morning in his office going over my career to date with him, and soon realised that we were going to get on well, and so it proved to be. He asked me if I felt all right about taking over Mr Bownas’ job and I assured him that I was looking forward to taking on the North Wales and Merseyside post. I knew the territory and the staff and had never been as fortunate as being in this position in any of the jobs I’d been asked to do. As I came out of Manchester that night I felt more relaxed than I had done for quite a long time.

I had arranged to meet with my senior vehicle examiners next day in Chester and found myself looking forward to doing so.

The Chester office was situated in an idyllic site at Dee Hills Park, overlooking the River Dee. They were old buildings, well maintained, but most of all easy to get to, with our own car park. Bob Jones, based in my old Crosby office, was well known to me, very sharp and a Liverpool lad. Harry Cartwright was close on retirement, which some of the staff took advantage of, but this could be put right without upsetting anyone too much. We had a most constructive meeting and I made arrangements to spend time with both of them over the next two weeks, wanting to get round and meet all the staff in their own offices.

Little did we know, but this was to be the Indian summer of the job as we knew it; I was given a hint of this from Ray 151

Ball. Knowing of his Navy back ground as I did, I had suggested that he may like to take a trip on one of the Mersey ferry boats and have a look round the engine room. He was delighted and I arranged this with a great friend, Jack Milligan, a Wallasey man and first class marine engineer, who had overseen the design and build of the Wallasey boats in Dundee.

An amusing aside to this story is that a few years later when the large transport executives were formed, the man in charge put Jack in charge of the buses. Such is life. Our trip on the ferry boat was a complete success. Jack and Ray got on as if they had known each other for years, talking marine engines. Jack took us out to the Mersey Bar and as we walked back to the car on our return, after thanking Jack for a memorable afternoon, Ray Ball intimated to me that some radical changes were being contemplated and that he was glad that he was coming towards retirement. I thought back on this conversation when these changes began to take place.

How right he had been in his assessment.

Working with Ray Ball was a pleasure and some years later when he had retired I started to call and see him on my way home from the bus factory in Blackpool. They built luxury coaches that we had to pass out prior to delivery to the customer: Ray lived at Lytham St Annes and looked forward to my visits. Ironically it was me now keeping him informed on how events were unfolding, as our organisation at last began to grasp the concept that we needed to concentrate our energy on how best to manage our way forward, as the political changes inevitably arising from the Thatcher government needed to be dealt with. The need for managers of a good calibre, my hobby horse for years, was now on the agenda and DV Jones, with whom I had clashed some years 152

ago, was our main man, now that Mr Toyne had retired.

During this period and due to the encouragement of Ken Horner, I had attended night school classes and become a member of the British Institute of Management. Out of the blue, I received a letter from DV’s secretary asking me to attend a ‘mechanical engineers’ management forum’ in Marsham Street, asking me to submit a short note (no more than a page) outlining my views and ideas. I was dumfounded, but soon recovered and put my thoughts on paper.

I look back on this meeting as a turning point that at last put management firmly into the vocabulary and thinking of the people who were charged with running our organisation; it was also amusing to observe several of the old-school hardliners trying to change horses in mid-stream. Alongside this, DV had appointed a new and much younger man. The favourite had been my old boss Fred Whally who I believe would have been able to do the job, but DV had gone for the younger man, who would be able to see the radical changes through, as well as not being inhibited by the history or personalities of some well-entrenched luddites. The new man was Ron Oliver, who I would come to know well over the next twelve years of my remaining service. We would have the normal ups and downs of any vigorous and healthy working relationship, while at the same time working towards the same goal.

Within a month Ron had called a meeting of some likeminded people, to explain how he intended to move the vehicle inspectorate forward, introducing those present to the concept of the district office. He asked me to set one up based on the present testing station in Kirkby, Liverpool. The principle was one of decentralisation from the traffic area offices, bringing the decision-making nearer to the 153

workplace. This was a real challenge and one I looked forward to. The more my mind tossed this fascinating problem about, the more I was drawn to a quotation of that great man Winston Churchill, and I do hope you don’t feel that I’m getting carried away. When discussing leadership, Churchill had cautioned: ‘When you come to look at the level of leadership that the man in charge is likely to display, first take note of the quality of the men he has gathered around him, since this will be of vital importance when the real tests come.’ What a stunning piece of advice this is; there was little I could do with the staff I inherited, but new appointments and restructuring systems were a different matter. I made this point with Ron at our next meeting, without referring to the great man, and he agreed that it was something we should try to build into our approach.

I had a list in my mind of at least six men who had only been with our organisation for eighteen months or so, most of whom I had interviewed. These were the people I would be looking to when the time came and opportunities arose. One of the more radical changes that came with the introduction of the district office was that all the vehicle examiners allocated to that office would be based there: this meant making alterations to the building at Kirkby and closing down all of the examiners’ existing offices. Nothing was going to be easy, but I found myself enjoying every minute of it, which I will talk about in the next chapter.

It was also at this time that the opportunity presented itself to discipline a member of the staff, who had been a major problem to our group since I had first encountered him during my time as the station manager at Wallasey. I had every confidence that Ray Ball, who was a very fair-minded man, would back me if he was convinced that I too had been 154

fair. The annual reports were due to be completed and I gave this particular individual an adverse report and told him so; there was nothing in it that he was not aware of, or had not been made aware of on previous occasions.

Part of the problem was that in the past his reports had been watered down, or sent forward with ambiguous comments attached, which no one had bothered to question, and in true civil service tradition no further action resulted. I knew Ray Ball would not condone this, any more than he would allow a damaging report to go forward if it were not justified. The report went through the system and ended up in our establishment division, who wrote to the man in question and me, indicating that they wished to interview him in London to take up the issues the report had raised. So far, so good. His appointment time was 11.15 am which meant that he did not have to travel overnight. Ray Ball asked me how I felt about it and what effect, if any, it would have on the man, our conversation taking place in my office in Manchester during my weekly Friday visit. I told him that my dealings with the man made me think that that the only aspect of his predicament to disturb him would be not being able to claim for travelling down overnight. Ray thought this quite cynical of me and said so. The phone went. Would you believe it, it was the very man asking me to authorise his overnight travel.

I refused and as Ray said, it was game, set and match. Kay Jemmet, who chaired the interview, rang me when it was all over, to say how much they had agreed with my assessment.

Also, during the interview, he had again brought up the issue of his overnight travel, which they refused (He still submitted a claim to me, which I refused to authorise).

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So ends the saga of my only disciplinary case of note; one bad apple in thirty-nine years is not so bad. I won’t go into the outcome, only to say that justice was done.

We said goodbye to Ray Ball with whom I kept in touch with until he returned to his native Yorkshire and include a photograph of him and all his staff in the North Western Traffic Area. He would have liked that.

North Western Traffic Area Staff, March 25th 1981

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Mum and Dad

Shirley’s Mum and Dad 157

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Chapter 14 Hard Times The Liverpool District Office was set up in August 1989.

However, before beginning to expand on my next challenge and the continued change that confronted everyone, there were issues that I was thrown into that tested me to the utmost. They were a mixture of the difficult things that we all have to deal with and situations that you would never expect to have to handle in the normal course of events. I’ve decided to write about them in this way and separate them from my work, mainly because of the emotional aspect and the respect required to fully cover them.

In February 1981 our mother died. It all happened in four days, starting with a phone call from her next door neighbour to me on the evening of Monday 9th. My dad, who rarely went out in the evening, had gone to a meeting of the Birkenhead branch of the ex-boxers’ association. Mum, who had been what we would call ‘out of sorts’ for a week or two, suddenly took ill and made her way next door, collapsing on the door step. They rang an ambulance and then rang me to tell me she had been taken to St Catharine’s hospital. I knew where Dad was and made my way immediately to the meeting which he was chairing. It was not a very pleasant journey; Mum was everything to him and always had been. I also rang my brother and sister who more or less arrived at the hospital as we did. This helped my dad. After a while a young doctor came to tell us that she was very ill, but they could not establish what the problem was. We were later to discover that her pancreas had failed and three days later she passed away, never having been ill in her life, at seventy-four years of age.

My dad’s world was shattered and he needed our help, 159

perhaps for the first time in his life. Sandra, my sister, was wonderful at this time, as we contained our grief within ourselves, a family once more. Mum was sorely missed. The funeral was a spectacular event, with two busloads attending from Liverpool, full of boxers, there to support my dad, who lived on for another thirteen years, the last three of these spent in a nursing home due to the onset of Alzheimer’s. I never missed going to see him, except when I was away on business and he always knew me, which was a blessing. His death affected me more deeply than my mother’s, which surprised me. He was a big man in every way and I was always able to draw strength from him, which may sound rather strange. It’s his image I go to whenever I’m troubled and I will always miss him.

In between these two losses, we also lost Shirley’s dad in 1984. He simply fell down and died after getting out of the bath, a great shock and loss to my family but as someone observed ‘a wonderful way to go’. He had been very involved with our children, who all loved him for the kind and loving man that he was, full of laughter and fun, always in the garden showing my girls how to do things. Shirley’s mum came to our house after he died and fell down the stairs the next day. She never recovered from the fall. Having been something of a recluse for most of her life, she ended her days in a nursing home in our village. She was never short of visitors, with all the girls living so nearby and died peacefully in her sleep.

There were, and are of course, compensations as all this was going on; life’s wheel continued to turn and the grandchildren began to arrive. Such is life, I’m thinking, as I type this approaching seventy-seven years of age, on the day that my eighth great grandchild has been born, a boy, Elliot, to Lucy’s daughter Ellie. This is life unfolding, as indeed it does, 160

bringing these extremes of happiness and sadness for us to deal with; natural situations that define our lives, making us what we are and shaping our characters.

I can now turn to two situations I had to deal with, both of which I would never have expected to have to become involved with. The first one concerned Bob Jones, whom we met in Chapter 13, having taken over the Senior vehicle examiner post in Liverpool. I had first met Bob during my hectic spell at Fazakerley Engineering. Such was the intensity of those days there was little time for making friends and I could just about remember him, which provided the basis for our friendship when we next met at Stanmore during his three week course, prior to his posting to the Liverpool testing station. He was a valued member of my staff, someone I trusted, and he fitted the difficult Liverpool post well, adapting to the change of job and using his natural ability to get along with people. He had married and was now living in Burscough. Imagine my surprise when he came to see me to say that he was about to leave his job. This came as a great shock to me and after I had taken in the essence of what he had told me, I asked him the obvious question: Why? His initial reply was to tell me that he did not really want to discuss the matter and I found myself facing that most difficult fine line that runs between being supportive and extracting information that will maybe begin to unravel the problem. Bob was not his usual open self and I sensed that he wanted to talk about whatever was inhibiting him. I went down the supportive route and he began to open up. The problem was that his marriage had broken up over the last six months and he was now in a situation that could and probably would infringe on his position in the department. Four months after his wife had left him he had started to see and 161

take out a lady who ran a business that included two coaches.

Bob had at that point asked her to take the coaches for any maintenance they required outside the area we covered, to a friend of his who owned a garage and this had been done. It was all a bit messy and if it could have been held at this point no harm had been done. Unfortunately this was not to be, due to another coach operator getting to know. He wrote to Bristol, our main office, alleging all kinds of wrongdoings; thank goodness my report had arrived ahead of the one he had compiled. However he had also written to the police at Copy Lane in Liverpool who immediately contacted me. I arranged a meeting with them the following week.

How I wished Ray Ball had still been in post, but he wasn’t.

Neville Jones was now in this job and what a mess he made of it. The police were trying to make a case implicating Bob Jones, which I was able to refute from the report I had submitted. To my total surprise and horror, Neville Jones was leaning towards the argument put forward by the police inspector, who was new and trying to make a name for himself. A compromise was reached and the police agreed that they would write to Bob, indicating that no further action was likely to be taken by them. On leaving the meeting, I asked Neville Jones if he would at least ring Bob and try to give him a much needed lift. I’ll never know if he did. The following evening Bob Jones took his own life. I was rung by the police in Burscough and asked to go over to help identify Bob, who had run a flexible pipe from his exhaust system into his car inside the garage, which he had sealed. This was a tragic loss of a man who had lost his way and needed help. Nothing criminal had taken place.

In complete contrast, the second incident was violent in the extreme, leaving a dreadful shadow over most of the staff 162

who worked at the Manchester Testing station at Breadbury.

In the summer of 1994, two officers of the department were shot dead while visiting an MOT garage in Stockport. The visit was by appointment made by Alan Singleton, a senior vehicle examiner. He was accompanied by a relatively new member of the technical staff, Simon Bruno. It was normal practice for two officers to visit when following up a disciplinary letter sent out resulting from substandard tests having taken place.

Ron Oliver, our chief executive, directed me to attend the subsequent trial held at the Crown Court in Manchester, for the purpose of faxing him a daily report of the proceedings.

The trial started on 15th November 1994, with Peter Openshaw QC presenting the case for the Crown. Richard Ferguson QC defended the garage proprietor, Thomas Bourke (accused of the shooting), with Justice Sachs presiding over the case. The department had written to the Crown Prosecution Service asking them to accommodate me throughout the proceedings and I was allocated a seat in the press box within the well of the court, a ring side seat, where I sat with my note book and pencil at the ready. This initially caused a slight problem in that none of the other reporters recognized me. A quick word in the ear of the one I was sitting next to did the trick and all went well until the first break, when we all gathered for refreshment. I wanted to make contact with the families to make sure they knew that the department was present and taking a great interest in the proceedings. I knew Alan Singleton’s wife, Barbara, so I made a bee line for the parents of Simon Bruno, but before I could introduce myself, Mr Bruno told me to stay away from him and his wife and he meant it. Fortunately a police inspector was looking for me with a message from Ron Oliver’s office and he was able to explain to the family who I was and this 163

put matters right, thank goodness. They were in fact delightful people for whom I developed the greatest respect.

I became acquainted with them as the case progressed. Seeing me in with all the other reporters and scribing away with them, they had taken me for a newspaper hack, which was quite understandable. On day two the trial was stopped and the jury discharged.

There was a problem with two of the members and the trial resumed on 21 November, continuing until the 7th of December, when, after due deliberation, a guilty verdict was announced. Burke was sentenced to twenty-eight years by Justice Sachs and is still in prison for the murder of two men, who simply went along to hear Burke’s side of the story. How on earth can one come to terms with such savage violence? I found it extremely difficult and writing my final report to Ron Oliver was not an easy task.

Chapter 15 The Liverpool District Office 164

The Liverpool District Office was set up in August 1989 and became the first operational district office in the UK. The concept of offices was, I believe, an idea that DV Jones came up with to replace the existing traffic area system, which had been in place with very few changes since the formation of the traffic areas in the 1930’s. Every aspect of the transport industry had changed, the volume, the network, the demand and of course the technology that was now being applied to vehicles, enabling much heavier loads to be moved around the country. Also, the move away from public transport to the private car had decimated the bus industry and at the same time given the general public a far greater awareness of how important transport was to the community as a whole. It was in fact a political issue, high on most people’s agenda. We, as an organisation, were still trying to provide a much-changed industry with a service and at the same time police it with an outdated system, staffed by people, most of who still thought that our job centred on putting vehicles off the road. Things had to change, including our attitude.

My personal views on the subject have been expressed throughout this account of my life and were mainly formed when I held the manager’s job at Wallasey. This step, closer to the industry and the public, was long overdue. My approach to Ron Oliver’s request to set up the first district office can be summed up in one word – enthusiastic!

The principle was to move the focus away from the big traffic area offices i.e. Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, where all the records and files were kept and the traffic commissioners resided. This was a radical idea, which entailed moving the technical staff out of their local offices, along with the senior vehicle examiners into the new locations. Clearly it involved alterations to the existing 166

buildings that could only be undertaken by the Ministry of Public Building and Works, who saw themselves as a vastly superior organisation to ours. I had encountered my first impasse; this called for high-powered thinking.

The problem was solved when I ‘arranged’ for an accident, involving a large cupboard and filing cabinet, to knock a huge hole in a wall that needed to come down in order to create an open-plan office to house most of the technical staff. A swift phone call to the Health and Safety Executive in Bootle produced hordes of workmen who arrived and stayed with us until all the alterations needed to change the Liverpool Heavy Goods Station into the Liverpool District Office had been completed. Ron Oliver made capital with this, as word got round that ‘some people would walk through walls to get things done’, the main point being we had made a good start.

In order to keep everyone in the picture we held a meeting each week on a Friday, at which it was explained what had been accomplished, where we were up to with work in progress and anything new that was planned for the coming week. Questions were invited and indeed encouraged; looking back I can see that the main benefit of this approach was that it killed off rumours before they got going. We only discussed what was happening and this saved a lot of time.

The other advantage of keeping things open is that you quickly establish who the positive and negative people are; this is invaluable, in that you are able to direct your energy to where it is most needed.

Once again, as in Scotland, I had divided the tasks into specific groups: people, systems and accommodation; all our equipment was to remain unchanged. By far the most important were the people and this is where most of my time was to be spent until June, when we were expected to become 167

operational and stand-alone from Manchester, which had previously been the head office. The people fell into six disciplines: managers, engineers and technical officers, testers, clerical staff, handymen and driving examiners. It is most important to stress that whilst the driving examiners were not under my management, I still had to ensure that their accommodation was suitable and also, in view of the heightened activity going on around them, make sure that they did not feel neglected. They are, at the best of times, a very sensitive bunch. As I had discovered on my various travels, you ignored them at your peril. I had asked them to all of the meetings for this reason and they were already making a fuss about their accommodation. This needed to be resolved. We had plenty of room around the area they used to carry out the reversing test and we explored the possibility of locating a stand-alone set of offices for them to use in this area and it solved the problem. The biggest problem by far was bringing the vehicle examiners, who were located in their own offices, into the testing station. I just made sure that they had the space and facilities they were entitled to and let nature take its course, also pointing out that we were all in exactly the same boat.

The help I needed in this area came from Eric Bober, a very experienced examiner, who simply told them all what I would have loved to tell them: ‘Grow up and get on with the job,’ but couldn’t. Things gradually settled down and I had a lot to thank Eric for during this period of transition; he was a real character and combined this with a great capacity for work.

He played an important role at this time and I’ve made sure he knows it. The photograph shows him as I will always remember him and was taken when we had entered a team in 168

the raft race, held each year at the Albert Dock. But I digress, and will talk about this at a later stage.

Slowly but surely, we began to make progress as a group, with everyone knowing what was expected from them: it was a most satisfying period of my working life. The District Office opened on time and we now turned our attention to moving forward as a growing concern.

As all the files related to the goods vehicle operators and bus companies began to arrive from Manchester, we needed to look at our staffing levels, but held back on recruitment until all the files were on the premises, so that we had an accurate figure on which to base our needs. The staffing levels had been worked out based on volumes; this proved to be a good move and also gave me the opportunity to raise a point on staffing that I felt strongly about. I insisted that, since the responsibility of running the district and meeting the targets agreed with the chief executive were my responsibility, so too should be the decision of whom we employed. Ron Oliver backed me all the way on this and in the end we won, with what I had always seen as a common sense approach. We started to recruit and went for local people whenever possible. This again was a decision made at a group meeting, which proved to be a winner; we had begun to act and work more professionally and collectively, in addition to creating an atmosphere in which people wanted to work. The new systems bedded down, along with the people who had been selected and agreed to run them: round pegs in round holes.

The two systems had now been brought together, i.e. the traffic area staff had been brought in alongside the existing testing station staff, both with their own management. My job was to ensure that we all sang off the same song sheet and make sure that the song sheet was taking us in the right 169

direction. The testing station was, in my view, in need of overhaul; the management team had lost control and all the real decisions were being made by the workforce, a very familiar failing in British industry at that time, particularly on Merseyside.

The starting point had to be talking to the existing manager and his technical officers, three people in total, who were charged with the day to day control and supervision of the fourteen men who actually tested the vehicles. The manager and his most senior aide were both within eighteen months of retirement and ideally the answer to my problem would have been for both of them to go early. When I put this suggestion to them they both recoiled in horror at the idea, telling me that the whole place would virtually grind to a halt if they were to leave. It was a non-starter and I had to shelve my plans for bringing in a new management team and so I turned my attention to the fifteen vehicle examiners now on site in their ‘new’ accommodation. David Lees had replaced Bob Jones as the senior vehicle examiner and we quickly established a good working relationship. David was very keen to make a name for himself and the establishment of the district office provided him with the opportunity to do so. It also gave me the chance to get the right kind of people around me, as we began to interview, bringing our staffing levels up to the fifteen vehicle examiners and the ten clerical staff needed. We were most fortunate and found people who would go on to serve the organisation in much higher positions as their careers unfolded. This gave me tremendous pleasure. Our chief executive, Ron Oliver, wrote to me on my retirement, congratulating me on my efforts to develop and support my staff. I am indeed fortunate that those things we set out to achieve have been recognised by the people that 170

matter. Seeing other people progress and do well is perhaps the most satisfying aspect of management, and I have had more than my share of seeing this happen.

As the time passed, it was soon time to turn the focus back onto the testing station, following the retirement of the two people mentioned above. The problem was solved very quickly by bringing Tom McQueen over from my old job in Wallasey, our sub office, and he very soon established the fact that the management were there to manage. I attended three industrial tribunals over a period of some eighteen months and got rid of the subversive element that had been undermining our attempt to run the operation in a correct manner. At this stage it would, I feel, be fair to say that the district office had found its feet and become a place where people enjoyed working. We applied for and were accepted as a holder of the Charter Mark; this was a benchmark as far as I was concerned, since it was a real indication of our attempt to be seen as an extension of the transport industry which I had always been going on about since my days at Wallasey. This also brought forward people who were naturally inclined to be proactive; people like Eric and the new younger recruits had played a large role in us getting there; it was most satisfying.

My main occupation during this period had been dominated by managing people and situations, but I was able to keep involved with the manufacturing side of the bus industry, with visits to Northern Counties who built vehicles in Wigan. David Cherry was the MD there and we soon became good friends, a friendship that lasted well into our retirement. I also made visits to the Duples factory in Blackpool and East Lancashire Coach Builders in Blackburn as required, with the occasional trip to the new Leyland plant 171

in Workington, as they began to build double-deck vehicles alongside their standard Leyland National, an excellent product, except for the engine.

As anyone reading this can see, it was indeed a busy period in my life and one I enjoyed. Over a period of perhaps two years our department had completely changed. However a rather serious problem had started to appear. As the various district offices began to settle down, it became most evident that there was a serious management, or should I say, lack of management, problem. The age-old problem had risen and needed to be faced; we did not have enough people on the books to manage the organisation as it needed to be taken forward. Ron Oliver called a number of people together in order to clarify the situation and find a way forward, without losing the impetus that had been generated, and we can look at the outcome of these discussions in the next chapter.

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Raft Race – Eric

Chapter 16 Cambridge, Birmingham and Cardiff

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The policy of trying to raise the standard of management on a national scale was a non-starter. We in Liverpool continued to make progress and stayed focused; we continued to meet and talk to the staff on a regular basis and started to see the beneficial results of having involved most of them in taking on responsibility and looking for more ways of raising revenue. All the district offices were operated and measured on a unit cost basis, so I applied the Henry Ford maxim of ‘lower the overheads and raise production’, easy to understand but somewhat more difficult to implement. All we had to sell was our expertise in vehicle examination and so we looked around to see how best this could be exploited. It is worth noting that one of the real benefits of having set up the system, was that you could in fact run it as if it were your own business, and that is what Ron Oliver was inviting district managers to do. A lot of people found it was a risky business and did not like it; they backed off and I’m not for a moment suggesting that they were wrong or incompetent.

They had not come into the job to run a business. I, on the other hand, had found that this was what I wanted to do, surrounding myself with like-minded people.

The other big plus was the Port of Liverpool, full of traffic and transport from all corners of the British Isles, so I set about turning this to our advantage. A letter to the Road Haulage Association in Northern Ireland set the ball rolling, asking if any of their members who used the port wished to take advantage of a check on brakes, smoke emission, tyres and lights. They invited me over to talk to their members and it was a great success. I offered this service for £20 and we could hardly cope with the demand. We got organised, with the men on the shop floor dealing with the detail on this, including asking me why we did not offer this service to our 174

own customers. So we did and it went down so well. Why didn’t I think of that? It was this kind of thinking and degree of cooperation between our staff at all levels that made our office so vibrant and such a great place to work during this period. My involvement with the port, resulted in a lifelong friendship with the port manager, Frank Rowbotham, who turned out to be a very well-placed man to know, as we set about expanding our contacts in the industry.

Within the next two years we were without doubt where I had always wanted to be, an extension of the industry.

Throughout this period my regional director, Col Humphrey, was most supportive and indicated that he would like me to take over the job of regional mechanical engineer when the present incumbent, Alf Turner, retired. Alf and I had been good friends from the traffic area days and I had a good idea of what the job entailed. Col had one of the keenest minds that I came across throughout my career but, and it was a big but, his drinking problem destroyed what could have been a wonderful progression to the very top. The reality of taking this job on was that I became Col’s chauffeur and stood in for him when he was ‘unwell’, or ‘very busy’. Once again, coming face–to-face with this destructive illness, brought back to me having to deal with the same problem in Wallasey testing station. I found myself moving sideways into a job so very different to the one that I had left in Liverpool; we constantly travelled throughout the north of England and North Wales, with frequent trips to Bristol to attend the monthly board meetings. I began to develop a far broader view of the organisation and the people who ran it, adding to the operational knowhow that the job in Liverpool had given me.

Then, right out of the blue, I was invited to once again attend a promotion interview and this time I passed. I had at 175

long last broken through the barrier and became a Grade 7.

The job allocated was based in Cambridge, however. While I was waiting for the man in post to retire, Ken Wright, who I had worked with in Scotland, asked me if I would take on the post in Birmingham that was vacant due to Alan Sutcliffe, who held the post, wanting to get back to Bristol where his family resided. All very complicated, but it was interesting to me in that there was an excellent train service that ran hourly between Liverpool Lime Street and Birmingham New Street.

I was able to run the Birmingham job without moving my home. I jumped at it and accepted Ken Wright’s offer. Ken quickly arranged a meeting in the traffic area offices in Broad Street. I travelled down on the train to time the journey, and it more than met my expectations, in that the Broad Street office was only fifteen minutes from the train station. The meeting went well, with Ken outlining the set-up in the West Midlands. I knew most of the staff in the various testing stations from my Stanmore days, but there were no obvious problems coming out of the discussion. Alan Sutcliffe was uncharacteristically quiet; under normal circumstances he could talk for England and his unusual reticence worried me.

Eventually I asked him if there were any problem areas that I needed to know about, the experience of working in big cities having shown me that there was normally something festering or needing attention. His body language immediately told me that there was and he eventually explained that there was a problem at the Birmingham Testing station, Garrett’s Green, in that they were losing money on a regular basis from the strong room. I could hardly believe my ears. Then adding to my surprise Ken Wright asked me what I thought we should do about it. Standing up I replied: ‘Go there now and sort it out!’ Then turning to Alan, I 176

said: ‘Lead the way,’ never having been to the Birmingham station.

On the way there I asked Alan to bring me up-to-date on the staffing and management situation that was in place. I also asked Ken Wright to introduce me as the man who had now taken over from Alan and I would take it from there. My industrial tribunal experience picked up at Liverpool was going to come in handy. The station manager was off sick and had been for the past three months, various relief managers having been drafted in from outlying stations. I was fortunate in knowing the present man in charge; he had been a member of the computer user group that I had been a member of as we approached the changeover from the manual systems previously in place. All the locks were changed and Dennis the new man was given the only keys.

Given the circumstances, I arranged for Dennis to stay for a few weeks and he agreed. I also decided to spend some time there and arranged to visit for two or three hours each day for the next few weeks. It was an easy place to get to, alongside Birmingham airport, and the correct thing to do. Garrett’s Green was an important part of the West Midland traffic area, together with offices in Broad Street, so I divided my time between these two places for the next two weeks, getting to know the staff. I must mention Marge, who ran the office at Garrett’s Green; without her the place would have ground to a halt. Having managed and worked in testing stations, it soon became clear to me that she ran the place and really cared about what went on and the people who worked there. She was brilliant and I told her so; our organisation owes Marge and people like her so much, and she was very much involved in bringing some normality back into the way the station was run.

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My time spent in the Broad Street office was equally rewarding and interesting. During my time in the Manchester office I had made a good friend in Bob May, who was the clerk to the Traffic Commissioner. Bob was now working in the Broad Street office doing the same job working for J Mervyn Pugh, the Traffic Commissioner for the West Midland Traffic Area. Friction had always been present between our organisation and every traffic area office that I had worked in and it mostly revolved around the egos and personalities of the top people involved. In effect, our job was to provide the commissioner with information related to the condition of goods vehicles, buses and coaches, and in addition how they were being operated (overloading) and driven (drivers’ hours). The commissioner then took this information into account, if he thought it relevant, when he issued the bus or haulage company with a licence to carry people or goods. In carrying out these duties he was completely independent, with any dispute or infringement of regulations being heard by him or his deputy at a public hearing or inquiry, at which the operator could be represented, if he wished to be, by a legal representative. Our staff could be called to the court to give evidence, if required. The commissioner’s decision was final. Normally I would not have gone into such detail, but it is important to see that the commissioner was the top man; I never had the slightest problem with this. On taking up my post in Birmingham, I had been briefed by our Ron Oliver, with Ken Wright present, that Mervyn Pugh was a most difficult man to deal with. As can be seen from the above events, I had not had a chance to meet him, but Bob May assured me that this was not such a bad thing, and how right he proved to be when a week later I found a handwritten note 178

from Mr Pugh in my mail, inviting me to join him for coffee in his office the following day.

My meeting with Mr Pugh was one of those incidents that stay in your mind, but first I’ll try to describe the man. He was without doubt an eccentric, a Public School boy who had attended Shrewsbury School with Michal Heseltine, six feet seven inches tall, with a rather loud voice, imposing and most articulate. I had heard him speak at a public meeting in Liverpool some years before and he was brilliant. On his desk he had a photograph of himself, but I never saw him as having an identity crisis. He welcomed me and told me that my good work had not gone unnoticed and I thanked him. He then completely floored me by asking me if I thought Gooch should open the batting for England. My mind was racing and I kept seeing him as Uncle Fred or Mr Mulliner from my PG Wodehouse stories. Pulling myself together I gave him my opinion on Gooch, which fortunately he agreed with. He then asked me to meet him at Worcestershire county cricket club the following Thursday at 10.30 am. And that was that. I made it back to my office to be joined by Bob May, who told me that I’d done very well and that Mr Pugh liked me. I never had the slightest problem with him; we just got on together and I was very sorry to leave him and Birmingham.

Things were going well for me and I began to find my way around the west Midlands, which to my surprise I liked. One week in four I would spend in Cardiff, a very different place, and a beautiful city. Never having been there before, I enjoyed finding my way around and meeting some nice people. Like Liverpool it had seen better days and needed to be tidied up.

The docklands, once so busy, had been run down and looked sad. Some years later I revisited and saw the wonderful job that the Welsh Office had done to improve the place. Both 179

cities had been principle west coast ports, playing their part in making Britain great and it is only right that they should be refurbished, attracting thousands of people each year, which is wonderful for the local economy. Just as I was settling into the job and the area, a phone call from Ron Oliver threw me into confusion; he was insisting that I take up the job in Cambridge. Roy Pitman was now ready to retire, so I went across to meet him and he could not have been more helpful.

The main problem for me was moving my home yet again; Shirley was now enjoying the grandchildren; asking her to move that far away would have been most unfair. I was well able to run the Birmingham job and get home by 7.00 pm most nights. Given all the facts, I went to Bristol to talk to Ron Oliver about staying in the West Midlands. It did not work and we ended up having one unholy row. I lost and ended up in Manchester without a job.

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Chapter 17 Manchester Wilderness My return to Manchester was without doubt a time for reflection. My whole world appeared to be falling apart, the promotion that I had worked so long and hard for had been lost and there was no obvious job for me in Manchester. Col 180

Humphries had now retired, while the new director, based in Scotland, was spending almost as much time flying between Edinburgh and Bristol or Manchester as he was in meetings, always with his secretary in tow who, it was rumoured, told him what to do. They became known as ‘Lindbergh and Amy Johnson’. I say this with no ill-feeling. Having worked with Arthur in Scotland I knew him to be well out of his depth and so it proved to be. I don’t ever remember him having an original idea in his head. It was indeed a strange, almost bizarre feeling, watching all this going on from a grandstand seat in Manchester. I simply made my way each day into the office and returned home again along the M56 each evening.

No one rang me and I received no mail.

My non-working life was a difficult adjustment to make after the hectic time I had experienced. Frustration set in, but I was able to offset this with the kindness shown to me by Tony Cansfield, who was the training officer for the region based in Manchester and a long-standing friend from my Stanmore days at the training school. I much appreciate the fact that Tony, on seeing my predicament, helped me, unlike others who looked on and did nothing. I kept on turning up and doing anything that came my way, including reading Far from the Madding Crowd, that wonderful book by Thomas Hardy. I had not lost my sense of humour, but it was being sorely tested. Clearly I had upset Ron Oliver by fighting to stay in Birmingham and he had decided to make an example of me, in a way that really hurt someone of my disposition; he gave me nothing to do.

This state of affairs continued for seven to eight months – sackcloth and ashes. Making my way forward slowly and in the process finding who my real friends were, the analogy in my mind was that of going through a tough patch during a 181

football match, seeing who the really good players are, as well as those the team are carrying. You also find out quite a lot about yourself and, if able to do so, change for the better. My renaissance began with a visit to the Manchester office from Julian David, Ron Oliver’s right-hand man and someone I had forged a good relationship with in my days managing the Liverpool District Office. He asked me what I was doing and when I replied: ‘Nothing,’ he told me that he knew that I had fallen foul of Ron, but had not realised what had happened to me. He then asked if I would do some work for him, and knowing him as I did, told him that I would be delighted to work with him again. He explained that there was a major problem on the horizon, in that some new legislation would come into force next year that had the potential of taking a great deal of revenue away from our organisation into the private sector. ‘Would you like to have a look at the problem?’ he asked me ‘and come up with some ideas of how we might be able to keep the work and the revenue.’ I told him that I would be delighted to take this on board. We sat down and he outlined the detail to me; we then agreed to meet in two weeks’ time at a service area on the M6, when I could put some workable solutions to him.

This proved to be my lifeline back into the fold; I now had a real job again and needed to use my mind and then convince other people to put into practice the answers to the problems that needed to be overcome in order to keep the organisation solvent. This type of work was right up my street and I began to think about ways to overcome the problem, which centred on the way we organised our appointments for vehicles to be presented for test.

The current regulations covered all goods vehicles over 3.5 tons laden weight; they had to go to a Ministry testing station 182

to be tested. Vehicles below this weight were tested at approved MOT testing stations in the private sector. The new regulations, when in force, would allow the private sector to test any goods vehicle under 7.5 tons. This opened up a huge field of vehicles now available to the private sector to test that previously had to come to our stations: a great deal of money was involved. In short we needed to compete with the private sector (garage trade). The only advantage we had, and it was a good one, was that we knew all the customers and had always tested the vehicles. The disadvantage, and it was a massive one, was our booking system; it would have to be changed. We needed to go to direct booking over the phone, or call in and book over the counter.

Our present system of having to apply to Swansea, who had no idea of the customer’s needs, and cared even less, was a non-starter. I rang Tom Stratford, who managed Doncaster, and put the idea to him, knowing that he would jump at the chance to go down this road. The following day I was in Doncaster discussing details with the staff and Tom, who were all keen to make it work, and the following week Doncaster started to use the direct booking system on a daily basis. It went like a dream. My meeting with Julian David went well up to a point; he was concerned with a reaction from Swansea, which was where all applications for tests were sent. They then made the appointment and informed both the operator and the testing station by post. Such a longwinded system would never stand up against the trade. My view was that we should go down to see them, but be positive and tell them that this was going to happen. Any other approach would have entailed nothing but meetings for months on end.

In the end he agreed and that is what we did. I then ran the concept out to sixteen further stations after speaking with the 183

staff involved; it was a success and we retained somewhere in the region of 90% of the testing, together with the revenue from this group of vehicles.

The next month passed quickly as I continued to carry out various jobs for Julian. The other one that sticks in my mind was writing a testing manual for invalid vehicles. This was much needed and proved to be a really interesting task, as there is such a range of these vehicles, mostly altered to suit all types of disability by a vast number of garages. Writing a manual was daunting and the people I came into contact with were quite ingenious, several of the garages specialising in this field, usually started by looking after a family member or close friend. This all happened thirty years ago and I’m sure the system is now much improved, with the manufacturer more involved. But these things all have to start somewhere and it was a most interesting and rewarding job.

Quite out of the blue I had a call from Ron Oliver’s secretary, who informed me that Ron had agreed to read a paper to the Liverpool branch of the Chartered Institute of Transport, of which I am a member. He wanted me to help him with his presentation, also meet him off the train and generally look after his interests whilst in town. I confirmed the date with her and agreed to be available. I picked him up from the hotel then took him to the venue, only to find that all the slides had fallen out of the carousel and become mixed up.

We looked at each other then I said: ‘Well you can’t blame me for that’. This broke the ice and I suggested to our chairman that Ron would like to do a half hour introductory talk about his background and maybe take a few questions. This went down very well, by which time I had got the machinery back in working order. The presentation went well and on the way back into town we passed Anfield. Ron intimated that his son 184

followed Liverpool FC and we talked about the club for a while and how well it had been managed. On the way to collect him the following day I called at Bob Rawcliff’s garage and picked up an autographed ball and shirt, then, as Ron was walking towards the ticket barrier on Lime Street station, I gave him a bag containing the two items. He was speechless for a while and then thanked me. His son wrote me a nice letter, which I still have and Ron and I are the best of friends.

The Beautiful Game can bring all kinds of people together, and so it proved to be. He realised that I was just as passionate about the job as he was and I realised that he was the boss.

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Chapter 18 Hillsborough I find it so difficult to even think about Hillsborough, let alone write about what must be seen as the worst event in the club’s history. I have decided to go ahead and write about this tragic event in view of the impact the day made on me. I was there and the inquest that is now taking place in Warrington is beginning to establish some facts that have been a long time coming. They also align with the views I formed on that day and have held ever since.

I had been given an invitation to what should have been a wonderful day, my wife’s birthday. I had booked a table that evening at the Hotel Victoria for the whole family, but I was off to Anfield for a champagne breakfast as a guest of the executive club prior to the executive coach trip to Sheffield to watch the semi-final. The start to the day was wonderful, as indeed was the weather. We followed the team bus out of the car park at Anfield and hit the road at 11.45.

We approached the ground from Halifax Road, where the team bus was escorted by police to the ground and into the parking area behind the South Stand. The remaining five buses comprising our group stopped in Leppings Lane, where we alighted. We were late due to motorway works on the M62 and the high level of police activity, stopping cars and minibuses on the road into the ground. This unplanned stop in Leppings Lane caused some minor confrontation with the police, but did in fact enable us to get into our seats in the North Stand, just as the big build-up started. This was caused by the repeated stop and search policy being carried out by the police; our party were searched three times between leaving the bus and getting into our seats. I had travelled over 187

with Tommy Smith and his wife Sue and a very good friend’s wife Alice. Sam, her husband, had been detained with a business problem and had kindly asked me to take his place.

Tommy was at the game in his capacity as a reporter, sitting across the ground from us in the press box located in the South Stand.

Once we had settled into our seats the main talking-point became the tightly-packed enclosures at the Leppings Lane end. Both of the South Yorkshire senior police officers were visible in the front row of the stand above these enclosures, looking down and pointing with their sticks, clearly discussing the situation. As our stand filled up more and more comments could be heard related to the situation outside in Leppings Lane; a couple behind us had been sent straight through and they had their whole ticket which proved the point. It was now 2.50 and it looked as if the police were trying to reduce the build-up of fans (caused in my view by their stop and search policy) in the Leppings Lane complex.

As the game started at 3.00 I noticed how still the enclosures were, no movement or sway that is usually visible.

Then almost immediately, Liverpool broke through at the Nottingham Forest end and a shot hit the post or bar and rebounded back into play. Again I could not see any movement from the Liverpool fans packed into the enclosures. I then saw a fan climb over the enclosures to the right hand side of the Liverpool goal and run towards Bruce Grobbelaar. It was difficult to deal with because my first reaction was: ‘Oh no! Why has he invaded the pitch?’ and then I realised how agitated he was, pointing into the crowd and pulling at Grobbelaar’s shirt. Suddenly Grobbelaar ran at full tilt towards the referee, holding him and pointing to the enclosures, which by now were covered with fans trying to 188

climb over and onto the pitch. It was 3.06. The referee stopped the game.

I’m going to leave it there and fast forward to Anfield some 23 years later, when Andy Burnham rose to speak to the crowd gathered to honour the ninety-six as they do each year.

In the first sentence of his address he made reference to ‘the Prime Minister‘. A lone voice came out of the crowd; it simply said: ‘Justice for the 96.’ Within seconds this had been taken up by the whole crowd and it went on and on. The minister was visibly shaken. A local man, he had an understanding of the depth of feeling; this was the 20th anniversary of the disaster.

On his return to London that day he set about the formation of the Independent Panel, which in September 2012 concluded that no Liverpool fans were responsible for the deaths and that attempts had been made by the authorities to conceal what had happened.

For those of us who had been there in 1989 on that fateful day, and in particular for the families, this was wonderful.

After twenty-five years of waiting and so many unjust and false dawns, this was the real thing – the truth!

The Independent Panel had been set up under the chairmanship of Dr James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool. The task that lay before the panel was indeed immense and complicated, in that the major institutions that were to be questioned had for years been in denial of any wrong-doing.

This, together with the off-loading of blame from the institutions onto the fans, would be a most difficult situation to overturn. The establishment would be challenged, as the panel sought to place blame where it belonged, an extremely difficult task to accomplish within our society.

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‘Thou shall not bear false witness,’ would be the accusation levelled time and again. Given the lies that had been told, it was never going to be an easy task. The impact of David Duckenfield’s first and deadly lie can never be underestimated. Once the first lie is told, it simply becomes easier to go on lying and, in this case, one might say essential.

The blame had to be moved to the fans (ticketless and drunk), for the gate being forced, leading to a crush on the terraces.

The media interpretation of events fell in line with the police interpretation from the outset. Graham Kelly, the FA chief executive and Graham Mackrell, Sheffield Wednesday’s secretary, were in the forefront of this. At the evening press conference Peter Wright, Chief Constable for South Yorkshire Police, blamed the initial crush at the Leppings Lane turnstiles on the late arrival of three to four thousand Liverpool fans, who turned up five minutes before kick-off time.

Thus we begin to see the forced gate theory beginning to merge with and be overtaken by the larger conspiracy theory: Heysel; hooligans; drunk; no tickets. By the following day the media were in full flow, led by the Sun. This perception was now linked to the instructions given to South Yorkshire police officers, junior officers being encouraged not to make notes, just submit their recollections of the day to their senior officers. This would be the same group who would later be scrambling for compensation on the grounds of the dreadful things they had seen and the effect it was having on their minds. So we now have the media version of the truth, with the evidence of the police officers verifying ‘the truth as reported’. Twenty-four hours later, Thatcher entered the fray.

Liverpool was by this time in freefall: we had come through Hatton, Heysel and the riots. In Thatcher’s book the city had 190

form and a reputation to go with it. This was the chance that she was not going to miss to further sully our name and she acted accordingly, never missing an opportunity to pull the city down. It has also come to light in correspondence between close advisors in high office that Liverpool was to be left to ‘wither on the vine’ and depopulate. Manchester was to be shown every preference, wherever and whenever possible. This is precisely what has taken place, there for all to see.

As I have stated, this is not an easy subject to write about, even more so if you were there. It’s rather like the Great War in that anyone who took part in it never wanted to talk about it. After what has been a very long and difficult period, justice now appears to be on the agenda. Long may this continue.

Throughout this time it is important to recognise and record the continuing and ever present support shown by Everton and Celtic football clubs, together with their supporters.

One last important point I wish to make on this most difficult subject is that anyone wishing to begin to understand this tragic event should read Professor Phil Scraton’s book Hillsborough, The Truth, first published in 1999.

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Chapter 19 Heartbreak I now return to healing the rift that had opened up between Ron Oliver and me. I continued on project work for both Ron and Julian David, which entailed quite a lot of travelling, as well as frequent visits to Bristol. It was interesting, highquality work which I thoroughly enjoyed, continuing to expand my understanding of our organisation and the people that ran it. During a visit to Swansea I ran into our accountant Jeff Belt, who I had first met when he visited Liverpool shortly after we had opened the district office. He had come up to make sure that all the extra work we were taking on was being properly brought to account. I found him easy to get on with and we became good friends. Over lunch he mentioned that the main board, of which he was a member, were about to advertise for someone to coordinate the activities of the district managers. I saw this as a sensible thing to do and said so; he then suggested that maybe I should apply for the job.

After a good deal of thought I did and got it.

The main reason was that Ron Oliver brought in an outside firm to run the interviews and selection process up to the final selection. The interviews and selection went on for three days. Then on the fourth day the ten people selected were interviewed by Ron, Jeff, and Bob Tatchel, who was head of the vehicle testing division. This was then unheard of in the civil service and cut out the usual ‘jobs for the boys’ type of selection that had always been my downfall. The process was transparent and the same for everyone who applied for the job. I was even interviewed after I had been given the job and the profile of my performance was compared with the original profile drawn up by Ron, when he gave them the task 193

of finding someone to fill the role. This may look rather over the top, but it does at least confirm that the right person had got the job.

My wife had come down with me and enjoyed four days of walking around Bristol, which is a beautiful city. There was never a question of moving home but we both agreed that if we had been younger we would have found no problem living there. Also the M4 corridor had opened up good job opportunities for young people leaving school. We set out for home on the Thursday evening. The following morning I had to go to Wales to talk to the road haulage industry. My car phone rang on the way to my meeting and I pulled over to answer the call; it was Ron to tell me the job was mine with a seat on the Vehicle Board if I would accept. I was elated and said so, then rang Shirley. All my Christmases had come at once and I was now able for the first time to do things that needed doing, without all the bureaucratic nonsense; well, most of it. Working out of Bristol did not make a great deal of sense, so I immediately set up my old office in Liverpool, from where I could deal with any problems in the north. My work pattern was three weeks on the road and one week in Bristol to attend the monthly board meeting, for which I needed three days to prepare and one to get things into place, postmeeting. Ron had also added Swansea to my list of things that needed to be sorted out; this meant that I needed to be there at least once each month. However, after my first visit, I realised that I would have to spend time there and more or less reorganise the place, and that is what I did.

Looking back I now see this as the most interesting and successful job I ever did. The place had been run on fear by a man who should never have been allowed to manage people; it took three months to put things right and gave me the 194

utmost satisfaction. I quickly found out that the people from South Wales are so different from their northern brethren; also Swansea had a large Italian community which had integrated into the local population. The end product was a group of delightful people, most willing and able, very open and friendly to deal with, as I’ve pointed out above. Swansea was the hub; getting it right was important and I could now turn my attention to the ninety-one testing stations that we ran throughout the UK. As I thought about this, it did occur to me that I was now in a rather unique position, in that I had a complete understanding of how both the testing stations and Swansea worked. Until I had actually worked in Swansea and spoken to them about various problems, I had not realised that they knew little of what went on in the stations; similarly the station staff knew nothing about Swansea. They simply exchanged vast amounts of paper each day. The stations tested the vehicles and Swansea organised this in a most elaborate way, taking the fees and keeping records of just about everything. There was also a technical section, which liaised with the vehicle manufacturers; this in my view was an important area that could be expanded to our advantage.

At the next board meeting I made a proposition that the organisation would benefit in two important areas by giving the technical staff the opportunity to broaden their understanding of how the system worked. This should enable them to make each other’s job that much easier, which must result in a better, more effective service to the customer. We tried it by exchanging staff and putting them into each other’s jobs. It was a winner from day one, creating a far more positive workforce, once they realised that they could make 195

the whole process flow that much easier, understanding where the problem areas lay.

Getting round the stations was a real grind, making sure that I got to see the high throughput stations, whilst trying to not make the smaller ones feel that they did not matter. What mattered to me more than anything else was the staff; people are and always will be the heartbeat of any organisation. To that end, I began to concentrate on the regional managers. I knew them all, having been one of them and it soon became clear that this was an area that needed to be tackled; the everpresent problem of managerial quality was once more the problem. The first thing that has to be done in this situation is to identify suitable replacements; it’s no use going down this road unless you have the right man to go straight into the job.

We worked, serving the industry five days each week, and that was continuous. The step up to regional manager is a big one and one you have got to get right. So, with this in mind, I began to make a mental note of people who had the potential to fulfil this role, as I moved round the various stations, talking and listening to the staff. I also included our female staff and in fact made the first appointments of female station managers. This was a huge pool of talent that had not previously been taken into account and again I had in mind my experience in Birmingham.

Once change starts to happen, in hand with open communication in place, my experience has shown me that the sooner you are able to involve the staff in decisionmaking, the quicker you will make positive progress. I believe that the fancy name for this was empowerment. I was very much into management at this time, having become a member of the Institute of Management whilst running the Wallasey station. However it was during the run up to 196

Liverpool opening as a district office that I really began to learn that 2+2 don’t always make 4; there is no substitute for the real thing.

In the course of all the travelling I was doing I had come across three or four people who I knew would make good district managers, and so they proved to be when their chance came along. I had earmarked John Leaman, John Agnew and Ray Allsop, all excellent people who would shine in their new roles, although Ray did move on to new pastures, eventually getting a much better offer. It was during these interviews that my next life-changing event came. I had just started to settle Ian Miller down, prior to moving into the interview. He was the current man we had in Scotland and I knew him from my time in Perth, where he was based. Without warning my secretary came into the room. I immediately knew that something was wrong and started to make a note of what I had asked Ian, so that we could minimise the disruption to him. I was suddenly aware that it was me she wanted to talk to. She was telling me that I must ring my daughter Sarah right away. I made my way to the reception area at the Hilton Hotel and picked the phone up, to be told by Sarah that Shirley was in Preston Hospital, having been taken there from the Lake District, where she had been visiting Laura and our new grandson, Joseph. I went numb and simply said: ‘I’m on my way.’

The journey to Preston has been erased from my memory; I should never have made it. I can remember Jeff Green offering to drive me there, also that the hire car was a Honda, but that is it. The next thing I recall is walking into the reception area at the hospital and facing my five children, the really strange thing about it being that they were all looking at me with the expectation that I was going to put things right.

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Very frightening, just as if they were all little again and Dad had arrived to solve the problem. Shirley was in Preston for sixty-eight days during which time she had a massive operation to deal with two cerebral aneurysms on the left hand side of her head, which were bleeding. She had another on the right-hand side that was not bleeding. This was left untouched at my request after discussion with the surgeon.

All this took place in March in 1996; Shirley was fifty-nine; just one year and four months before I was due to retire. It was devastating in its impact on my family. I could go on to write about Shirley’s doctor who had been treating her for asthma, but nothing could now change what had happened. It was the reality that we needed to deal with and this is what we all had to adjust to. I became Shirley’s carer and eventually brought her home. The next four years and eight months were all about trying to accept what had taken place and learning to live with it. My retirement was a non-event and my family was being torn apart. It was Shirley who was, as ever, showing all of us how to deal with this tragic event. My wife died on the 12th of October 2000 in Arrowe Park Hospital at ten minutes past four in the morning. The third aneurysm had started to bleed and she just slipped away. As I sat there, my mind went back to our wedding day, some forty-two years ago. We had married in St Joseph’s Church, Upton, less than one mile away. Strange how the mind works!

I was heartbroken. Before moving on I cannot leave out two important things that I need to record. One is the issue of my running battle with the NHS, including Shirley’s doctor, who only visited me twice in almost five years, each visit ending with her advising me to put my wife into a home – dreadful advice from someone who should be helping. The second, and by far the most difficult thing to fathom out was, 198

where do you go for help? Then (2000) the NHS had been allowed to fragment into literally hundreds of what can only be seen as small kingdoms, each one jealously guarded and run by people who appeared to think and act as if sick people were scattered about in order to give them their jobs. First of all you had to find them, then the battle commenced. For example, Shirley needed a bed and I ordered one from St Cath’s Hospital, where I had been told to apply. It arrived in flat-pack form. Repeated requests for it to be assembled went unheeded, so I put it together and then rang to ask where the mattress was. That, I was told, was a completely different department, as was the pump, without which both the bed and the mattress were useless and so it went on. Fun at first perhaps, then you begin to realise that there are thousands of them and only one of you. I lasted nearly five years and then hit the wall. The point I am making here is: yes, by far the best place for any stroke victim is in their own home, whenever possible, but the support must be managed and coordinated from one place by one person.

Also during this most difficult time I was awarded an MBE and took Shirley to the Palace in a magnificent hat. I was allowed to take two of our children. They sorted out which two, and then off we went in my mini-bus that also housed Shirley’s wheelchair. It was a wonderful day, the highlight of course being meeting the Queen, who I’m sure kept looking at Shirley’s hat, and staying in a posh hotel able to accommodate Shirley, who displayed such courage in what must have been an ordeal for her.

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Last day in Bristol, 1997

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MBE – Big Day!

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Chapter 20 Life Goes On In the aftermath of my wife’s death, I found myself spending far too much time in Liverpool late at night drinking. I was on the wrong track and extremely vulnerable. It was Lucy, my youngest daughter, who came to my rescue, suggesting that I should think about going to University. Slowly, over a period of time, what had appeared to me as a mad idea, began to make sense. In total contrast to my grammar school experience, this was to prove a joy from day one and once I had passed an English paper that they insisted on, I was able to enrol and start studying for a BA degree. I started in January 2003. The rules then in force at Liverpool University meant that I had to take three subjects in my first year. At the end of the year, providing all had gone well, I could choose to drop one or two subjects. Dropping one subject meant studying the other two and if you did this and passed them both you could add Honours to your degree. If you chose to drop two subjects and passed the remaining one you just got the BA. My three subjects were World Literature, British Social History from the Edwardian period to the present day (including Tony Blair) and Irish Studies from the Viking period, comprising History, Politics and Literature.

In effect the first year is quite hectic, but it does get your nose down quickly and also moves you around the campus; you soon get to know how the library works, where to eat, etc.

It was a whole new world and I loved it. I ended up dropping World Literature; it was a hard choice to make. My main tutors were now Dr Pat Nugent and Dr Frank Shovlin for my Irish work, and Professor David Dutton and Dr Andrew Davies for my history studies. They were all brilliant people, 202

who gave me so much help and encouragement, for which I can’t thank them enough. By the time I had settled into the second year work, I was totally convinced that I had made the right decision in taking Lucy’s advice. I had ‘found myself’ at university, my energy had returned and I was focused on what had to be done. Discipline had returned to my life and my competitive side was once again in full flow. Being surrounded by young people, added to all of these elements and made me see things in a far more positive light.

The other major shift in my thinking came as I began to appreciate the challenge that literature was making: you think in an entirely different way than when considering engineering and people problems. My mind was buzzing, trying to put information into usable, structured order. I then realised I was on the wrong road; logic, rules and equations were not the way forward. Read the books and put your mind in gear was the order of the day, using imagination along the way. Doing this opened up a whole new world.

James Joyce completely fooled me, along with a few more people. I read Dubliners and wondered what all the fuss was about. ‘What is he trying to tell me?’ However the more I read the more there was to read. Slowly it all began to make sense; I started to see the connections between Irish literature, politics and history, (the literary revival). My tutors were brilliant, pointing me in the right direction (West) and always willing to give me time. Our discussions began to register with me, as I started to contribute to the debate. Understanding the links, along with the hidden meanings, completely altered the way I had previously seen the story. Dubliners is the perfect example of what I am getting at; reading the same stories now is almost an out-of-body experience. Joyce has buried so much in these stories you begin to understand the effect of his 203

‘scrupulous meanness’. He never wasted a word; everything he wrote had a real meaning or pointed to a parallel he had encountered in his life, be it a person or situation. Nothing went past him. One can only be in awe of his mind and the way he used it. I consider myself most fortunate to have stumbled into Joyce in these surroundings, where I had access to people willing to help me in such a positive way.

My experience with the History department was not so harmonious, mainly with the head of the department.

However Professor Dutton and Dr Andrew Davies could not have been more helpful to me. David Dutton’s Friday morning lectures on the prime ministers held me spellbound. Also his habit of locking the door to the lecture room at precisely 9.00 am was so amusing. He simply carried on with his lecture as the late night revellers continued to knock on the door. I too had a slight difference of opinion with him, which appealed to his sense of humour. We had been talking about Asquith and the run-up to the First World War. I had chosen to write an essay on this period and had been ‘waxing lyrical’ about Lloyd George, one of my heroes since the long walks with my granddad in the hills of Wales. Making the point that he was winning the race with Germany in building Dreadnought battle ships, I added the words: ‘and he was revelling in it’.

When I received my essay back, he had given me a reasonable mark but alongside my observation of Lloyd George ‘revelling’, he had written in the margin: ‘You are not writing for the Sun.’ Recognising that I could have some fun with him with this, I made an appointment to see him at his next surgery and asked him what he meant by his remark, keeping my face straight. Looking me in the eye he quite seriously asked: ‘Have I upset you?’ I quickly replied: ‘Well you would have done if you had said the Guardian.’ He burst out 204

laughing. After this we became good friends and I was upset that the head of the department prevented me from joining David’s class related to appeasement, a subject that I was very interested in.

This in effect led to me meeting Dr Andrew Davies, who introduced me to what law and order meant to the indigenous population of these Islands, as the Industrial Revolution began to shift an agricultural population towards becoming an industrial one. People flocked in to what became our cities, with no structured approach to things we now take for granted: education, health provision, decent housing.

Violence and masculinity, often fuelled by alcohol, challenged law and order head on, with a rapidly expanding class system adding to the distortion and distribution of wealth. It was indeed the most difficult of times and here was I in such a privileged position, just two generations away, beginning to understand how and why it had all happened.

This was all part of my wonderful university experience that culminated in a BA Hons degree in July 2008 and classed as a 2-1. Once all the excitement had subsided, I sat down with my mentor and great friend Dr Frank Shovlin in the Irish department. He told me that I had narrowly missed a First Class Honours and how did I feel about this. I told him that I was delighted with my result, remembering where I had been when I started. Frank went on to say that he had been impressed with my thesis on John McGahern and suggested that I should consider going on to take an MA in conjunction with Galway University and Liverpool. This appealed to me and I felt up for it. I enrolled for the first John McGahern summer school, after submitting a paper to Dr John Kenny at Galway University. My intention was to work between both universities. Unfortunately, with the collapse of the Irish 205

economy, my funding was no longer in place. I did talk about this with Professor Marianne Elliott, Director of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, but all to no avail and that’s where my university career finished. It was a wonderful journey that had put my life back together again. Truly, life does go on, and is for living.

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