Oh boy did some of you deliver! Many thanks for all the contributions.
Several of those contributions referred to skits and songs. This one from Jilly Black, for example:
…this is the one where I remember Jonny Rose doing lots of guitar playing and also acting as a sort of security guard (taking us out to check in the fields one evening with a torch, saying “check in the corners”!) throughout. I also remember there being an awful lot of women who were in love with and falling over Simon Jacobs. That happened quite a bit anyway, but specially at this convention, and I’m also wondering if it’s the one where Pinner did it’s unforgettable welfare-based skit, with Alan Tucker playing the part of our unforgettable Mrs Kushin, re-enacting one of the visits we made, where I think she’d accused someone of breaking a window with a stone from her lawn mower (amazing, what you remember).
Simon Jacobs being “oh so cool” with the girls (18 months or so earlier)
Unusually, Simon chimed in with a stunning memory from that convention. I had chided that Simon, “usually pleads amnesia on stuff that far back, unless Elvis Costello was involved”…
…but I didn’t count on Dave Edmunds. Here’s Simon’s recollection:
…hark, there is one crystal clear memory from 80/81 and it absolutely involves Jilly because it was a duet. Of Jilly and me. I don’t remember the context or how the words were altered, but, because I really loved the song, I managed to force a version of ‘Baby Ride Easy’ into the proceedings. Jilly and I became Carlene Carter and Dave Edmunds respectively. I remember being on a stage with Jilly belting this out and loving it.
Jilly doing country (Keele as it happens) three or four years later
If anyone is struggling to visualise Simon and Jilly singing that song, the following video of the original by Dave Edmunds and Carlene Carter might help you. I must say, on seeing the vid, the Simon and Jilly performance came racing back into my brain:
You can visualise Simon Jacobs & Jilly Black…can’t you?
The other thing that came racing back to my brain was the Streatham effort at a skit that year. I can’t remember the details of it, but something had gone wrong and we were bereft of a performable script. I remember sitting up till all hours with Wendy Robbins hurriedly throwing together a script.
Skittish Streatham on a previous occasion. I’m the goon in the green leotard.
Wendy and I had a couple of things on our minds to use. Firstly, the US Presidential election had just happened. Reagan had been elected. Also, we both had seen the recent Hal Ashby film, Being There, with Peter Sellers as a sort-of innocent savant who is mistaken for a wise man and inadvertently becomes an advisor to the President of the USA. Worth seeing if you missed it at the time; a sort of enduring classic. But I digress.
Anyway, we wrote a skit with a convoluted plot about Wendy being a sort-of innocent savant BBYO chapter president who inadvertently, while applying to the USA for some sort of club presidency, finds herself running for the Presidency of the USA…and winning.
It was ludicrously complex, not really suited to a thrown together, unrehearsed skit. Yet somehow, with Wendy’s bravura performance in the lead, the skit passed some sort of “so bad it’s good” benchmark and it all went down rather well.
Wendy in a charitable role, Nightingale, c18 months earlier
Anyway, these happy memories might help to trigger similar ones from others who enjoy looking at this stuff.
So two questions for “advanced students”:
Does anyone else have skit an/or song memories from that convention to share?
Did anyone take photographs that year? I don’t think I’ve seen a single photo from the 80/81 convention. It would be super to share pictures if there are any.
I have almost no memory of my last BBYO convention.
Clearly I spent a lot of time at Hillel House between my return from Keele University (13 December) and the start of convention helping to plan/prepare the thing.
I think I might have made some separate notes at the time, but if I did they have been lost with the other memorabilia from that era that my mother threw out at one time, because she “didn’t think anyone would want to keep all of those old jottings and such rubbish.” I’m still not over it.
The diary says I stayed at Howard’s the night before convention. I’m trying to remember which Howard that must have been. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Howard, but thanks again.
Update: Jack Gilbert chipped in to suggest that this was probably Howard Wiseman, as I knew him well from events passim. A skim through my old, ragged address book suggests that it almost certainly would have been Howard Wiseman. Thanks Jack.
I think I sort-of acted as returning officer for the elections that year, as I do recall feeling that I had experience of such matters when I got involved with election appeals and such at Keele a few years later.
I know that we elected Lewis Sykes as President.
I know I was awarded life membership at that convention. I probably cried upon receipt.
The diary says that I went to Portsmouth with Jenny (must be Jenny Council) after convention and stayed at Barry Laden’s place. In truth I don’t really remember that specific visit although I do remember visiting Portsmouth several times. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Barry, but thanks again.
But beyond the thin gruel in my diary, most of it is just a blur.
So this time, I am shouting out the the BBAK (BBYO alte kackes) community for help. Please chime in with your memories, however slight. They might trigger some of mine – my memory is quite good at being triggered these days.
So once again, my plea. Help! Please chime in with memories of that convention. Once those are gathered, I might be able to write a better piece than this.
…I thought I was probably conflating two visits in my mind, but couldn’t find reference to a second stay in my 1980 diary.
Now (January 2018) going through my 1981 diary looking for something completely different, I found reference to the second visit. In fact it was late December 1980, by which time I had started writing in my new diary.
Saturday 20 December 1980 …went to Manchester – NR Exec – South Manchester (Spencer’s)…Mark [Sunday 21 December] Lewis’s for night…convention meeting – home – v tired.
“Spencer’s” must mean Spencer Jacobs’s house.
So, the Spandau Ballet song that was rolling around in my head while remembering staying at the Lewis’s house was not a false memory, it was a current song at the time of that second visit. As was my memory of me (briefly) getting in a muddle between Spandau Ballet and Joy Division. Unforgivable.
If this disambiguation helps Mark (and/or Mandy) Lewis to recall more about those visits, that would be good.
It’s not a particularly long story:
Coda To This Long/Short Story – Late 2020
This memory has a sad coda, as I am writing up much of this period late in 2020, 40 years after the events. Mandy Lewis (latterly Amanda Goodman) died earlier in 2020 after a long illness.
A meeting of minds and a fun, fumbling, intimate time in the early hours, forty years ago, between me and Mandy, is hardly a matter of earth-shattering revelation.
But I do remember at the time being very taken with Mandy and striving, perhaps in the face of sound judgement and good sense, to reconnect after the event, in vain.
In an act of latter-day recklessness (heaven knows, you don’t mess with Mark Lewis over media matters), I have borrowed the following charming montage that Mark posted on Facebook as a tribute to Mandy soon after she died.
I spent the summer of 1980 trying to run the BBYO office in Hillel House. Rebecca Lowi, our wonderful full-timer, had left. I was on the National Executive, had just finished my ‘A’ Levels and had made no plans for the summer. The arrangement made sense for everyone.
I’ll have plenty to write about that summer in the fullness of time. The diary is rich with clues and the memory still holds some intriguing details. I was 17 going on 18 and that is surely a good age for seminal, memorable stuff.
This piece, though, is very specifically about a hoo-ha that kicked off very early in my time running the BBYO office, concerning that year’s kibbutz groups.
I shall try to extract the relevant scribbles:
Monday 21 July – Not too bad a day. (Kibbutz trouble though).
Tuesday 22 July – Hardish day. More bad reports about the Kibbutzniks
Wednesday 23 July – Hard day. Still worried about Kibbutz lot…
Thursday 24 July – Not too bad a day. (Afek sorted out).
Now the fact of the matter is, I really need some help from some of the people who were on those Kibbutz groups to piece together exactly what happened.
From memory, there were two groups i.e. two Kibbutzim. One Kibbutz seemed fine, whereas the other Kibbutz didn’t seem to recognise that groups of young teenagers from England (I think these were 14 to 17 year old groups) could not be expected to work full adult worker hours in Israeli summer weather.
I received several calls – I think from worried parents – saying their kids were very unhappy and that there did not seem to be equivalence between the Kibbutzim. I was concerned on the first day reports came in but things really kicked off on the second day.
I was 17 years old, I had been a schoolboy three weeks earlier, but it was my job to try intervening and helping to resolve this problem.
Would you want the fate of your kid to be, to any extent, in the hands of this…er…kid?
I remember talking to some sort of shaliach – i.e. a liaison officer from the agency through which the tours had been organised; The Jewish Agency, if I recall correctly. I think he was quite negative about the situation, suggesting that the problem Kibbutz (which I think must have been Afek given my diary note, but possibly was the other one) was not a suitable venue for teenage kibbutz experience tours.
I remember talking to the agency on the telephone in quite animated terms. Those readers who know me well, especially those who knew me well back then, can imagine how arsy I might have sounded. Did the person at the other end of the phone realise that he was talking to a kid? Possibly. That might have made their predicament seem scarier.
I remember saying that I had really angry parents on the phone constantly, some of them lawyers, who were already threatening to sue anything that moved if the problem wasn’t resolved rapidy.
I remember thinking that I was laying it on a bit thick. I also remember thinking that the “ach, so what do you expect us to do?” attitude I was getting back from my initial enquiries was not getting me anywhere. So laying it on thick with a metaphorical, oral trowel was probably the best approach.
If Afek really was the problem site, then the whole incident panned out (from my point of view) within 72 hours. Word soon reached me that conditions had been changed. Did some youngsters switch Kibbutz? – I think that might have happened in some cases. Or were arrangements made for the groups to meet up some more and have shared leisure time?
Anyway, I do recall that the returning youngsters seemed to have had a good experience in the end and that my intervention was perceived to have helped solve the problem.
I’d love to hear from people who were actually on those kibbutz groups and find out what memories you have of those trips.
I’d love to see some photos, if anyone has them to share.
Coincidentally, there was a play at London’s Royal Court that year, Not Quite Jerusalem, about British youngsters going off to experience Kibbutz life and it not being what they expected. Even more coincidentally, it had its initial public airing through rehearsed readings that very weekend, 25 and 26 July.
I didn’t get to see that Royal Court production, but 40 years on…a few days after writing these words, I shall see the play’s first revival at The Finborough Theatre:
Unsurprising, then, that my memories of that 1980 experience came to mind and I was keen to get my thoughts written down before my weak memories morph with the play!
Possibly Christine by Siouxie & The Banshees is the pick of the mix
Ahead of a virtual gathering of the Alleyn’s “Class of 1980” in January 2021, I have decided to share the mix tapes I made right at the end of my time at Alleyn’s School.
Rohan Candappa and Nick Wahla have asked questions for that gathering, which I answered here:
Those have led to some debate. Perhaps my “end of school” mix tapes will similarly cause some discussion. At the very least, I imagine they’ll spark some memories. Chart music was part of the soundtrack of many of our lives back then.
Effectively I recorded two batches right at the end of my time at Alleyn’s. One batch around the Whitsun long weekend (end of May 1980) and then another batch right at the very end – late June – mostly the weekend after the ‘A’ levels I’d guess.
Here’s a list of the first batch – the May 1980 batch:
Messages, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Dance, The Lambrettas
Breathing, Kate Bush
I’m Alive, Electric Light Orchestra
Teenage, UK Subs
Let’s Go Round Again, The Average White Band
Over You, Roxy Music
The Bed’s Too Big Without You, The Police
Theme From M*A*S*H, M*A*S*H
We Are Glass, Gary Numan
Here is the list of the late June 1980 batch:
Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime, The Korgis
Christine, Siouxsie and the Banshees
The Scratch, Surface Noise
New Amsterdam, Elvis Costello
Who Wants the World, The Stranglers
Play the Game, Queen
Breaking the Law, Judas Priest
Let’s Get Serious, Jermaine Jackson
No Doubt About It, Hot Chocolate
Funky Town, Lipps Inc
Crying, Don McLean
Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please, Splodgenessabounds
Given the amount of time I spent in The Fox On The Hill in that last Alleyn’s week, the final recording on that list comes as no surprise. (Although for sure I’d have been drinking bitter, not lager). Anyway, I don’t think “Two Pints…” will make it onto my Desert Island Discs list. Frankly, I can’t see any of the above making that list. Christine’s a great track, as is New Amsterdam. There’s some good stuff, but it’s not my best mix tape, that’s for sure. I was kinda busy with other stuff at that time.
I am writing this up in January 2021, in part as a response to a couple of “exam questions” set by friends Nick Wahla & Rohan Candappa, ahead of a gathering of the Class of 1980 in the “Virtual Buttery”.
In Rohan’s words:
Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”
It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?”
So, the day I left Alleyn’s was not, by my own account, a good day for me. That whole final week doesn’t read brilliantly in fact:
To transcribe that final day:
What a horrid day!!! Chem (I) -> In comm -> Econ II -> Fox after and got pissed.
I’m guessing that “in comm” means “held incommunicado”, presumably because I took the Chemistry exam before others had taken it…or others had taken the Economics exam before I took mine.
There are three mentions of going to “The Fox” that week, not just the “getting pissed” session after the exams.
The Fox On the Hill, Denmark Hill, was the hang out of choice for Alleyn’s boys like me and Anil Biltoo. I don’t think they had twigged that these fresh-faced besuited youngsters were often well below 18…or if they had twigged, at that time they didn’t care.
That “got pissed” session on my final day would doubtless have included Anil and I suspect a few others who finished their exams that day. Anyone out there remember?
The diary even for that final week of school is peppered with BBYO stuff. I was on a small National Executive with a large portfolio that year. A lot of difficult stuff had kicked off that spring, not least our sole full timer, Rebecca Lowi, was leaving on 30 June. I had agreed to run the office temporarily over the summer, while a successor was recruited, so started work on the Monday after leaving school to have a handover day with her.
It seems I spent the weekend in between leaving school and starting work with Ivor (Heller), Simon (Jacobs) and Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) on the Sunday.
But at the “day I left school” stage, that Keele element of my past was still in the future.
So, to answer Rohan’s question, “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?” I think the nub of my answer is that I would advise myself to be more reflective and thoughtful about the moment.
Yes, I had a lot going on at that time. Yes, I was psychologically in a rush to move on to fresh challenges. But I think I should have paid a little more heed at that time to the significance of the moment and reflected on that major, albeit natural, transition. And reflected on what those seven years at Alleyn’s had been about.
I have reflected on it since. Frankly, I’m not sure that reflection would have been all that profound at the time. I think it was much later that I started really to appreciate what that Alleyn’s education and those friendships, some enduring, others that resumed oh so easily, had done for me. Partly that appreciation came from growing up and partly from re-engaging with friends from school decades later. People like Rohan, Nick and many others.
But still I think that, at the time, I missed out on a “life moment” to which I can never return, by rushing away from the school that day and not looking back for years.
So, to answer Nick Wahla’s question, “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”, I’d simply say, “read this piece about the day I left Alleyn’s and try not to do it my way.”
…and agree in advance to amend any part of this Ogblog piece at Mark’s request…
…and use the word allegedly at frequent intervals, even though I know that the addition of that word serves no defensive purpose whatsoever if the statement to which it refers in libellous…
…but I digress.
At Simon’s launch, Mark and I had roughly the following conversation, from which I have recovered some memory (and the relevant diary pages):
Mark: I remember the first time I met you. I had recently joined my local BBYO group in Manchester and you came to stay at our house for for the weekend. You were on the National executive, so it felt to us that you were a visiting dignitary…all the more so, because you came straight from school and you were wearing a three-piece suit when you arrived. Were you wearing tails too?
Me: Was I heck wearing tails. I’ll confess to the three-piece suit though; that was the school uniform for sixth-formers.
Mark: We thought you must be incredibly posh.
Ian: I wasn’t incredibly posh. I was just a scholarship boy at Alleyn’s School…
The conversation continued. I promised to dig out the trusty diaries and try to establish exactly when that weekend happened and see what else the diary might reveal.
So here it is:
I’ll transliterate the relevant bits for any reader who doesn’t read the rarefied script otherwise known as my handwriting:
school OK, -> Euston -> Manchester -> Prestwich, Mark Lewis, stayed up till all hours -> shule -> lunch -> open house -> Nat Exec meeting -> party -> bed -> North v South soccer -> lunch -> Installations -> Piccadilly -> home (exhausted).
…and who wouldn’t be exhausted after that. I feel exhausted now just typing those words and thinking about it.
I like the Monday message too, by way of echo: “school OK”.
I’d just like to reflect for a moment on the early part of that adventure. The bit where I left school in my three piece suit, went to Euston and up to Manchester. The easiest/quickest route would have been to take the train from North Dulwich to London Bridge and the tube from there to Euston.
But that would have meant me venturing, more or less alone, on the Billy Biro’s (pupils of William Penn School) side of the station/platform, which, while wearing an Alleyn’s three-piece suit, would have been a form of attempted suicide. I don’t remember doing that.
More likely, I left school a little early, probably with Anil Biltoo, most likely (if with Anil) stopping at his house for a couple of cigarettes and an earful of some trendy music served up by his rock chick older sister Benita. Or, if Bi wasn’t around, we’d have probably listened to Innervisions by Stevie Wonder. Then, I guess, on to Euston, either by bus or by picking up the train from the relative safety of East Dulwich.
At no point in this trek from school to Mark Lewis’s house did it occur to me to change clothing. I must have had changes of clothing. But perhaps not a suitable suitcase/bag for my three-piece whistle.
Based on Mark’s 2017 description and my reflections on how I came across, I must have seemed like a Judaic Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I’m not sure whether that visit was my only stay at the Lewis house or whether I stayed there again on subsequent visits to Manchester that year. I certainly do remember discourse late into the night.
I recall Mark’s sister, Mandy, introducing me to the delights of the Manchester music scene, at least to the extent they were represented in her record collection and narrative. I think her main thing was Joy Division, but I might be mistaken.
It was only decades later I learnt that Joy Division weren’t Manchester at all, they were Macclesfield. I also recall hearing Spandau Ballet a few months later and confusing them with Joy Division, much to the derision of friends at the time. I don’t think I needed to confess that foible – I think it might have vanished without trace if I hadn’t raised the matter again. Perhaps Mandy talked about Spandau Ballet, but I think they came later and were quintessentially London. Perhaps none of us knew what we were talking about – I certainly didn’t – I only went to my first proper gig a few weeks later – click here for that debacle.
I hope this piece triggers some of Mark’s memories about that weekend. Or indeed memories of other subsequent weekends if I did stay more than once. I don’t know why, but I think the Joy Division (or whatever “Manchester scene” stuff it was) conversations might have been a subsequent visit.
The National Exec meeting would then, I think, have included Jay Marks, Ivor Heller, Paul DeWinter, Raymond Ingleby and the late, great Jeffrey Spector. We must have discussed matters of enormous import; I’m sure one of the others can fill us in on the details, all of which for some reason have slipped my mind.
I also have no recollection of the North v South football match – but that sounds like fun – perhaps someone out there does recall the match and can provide a match report and/or photographs.
This picture from a different BBYO football match, in Portsmouth. a year or so earlier, but the March 1980 one in Manchester will have looked a bit like this
The installation ceremony cannot have been for Mark Lewis’s new Sunnybank group – that was far too new. So perhaps it was the Sale group or more likely the larger Whitefield Group. Again, perhaps some people reading this can chime in with their own memories and/or diary notes and/or photographs…
Correction: David Nispel has written in to confirm that Sunnybank BBYO had actually been going for 2-3 years by that time and that this weekend was their inaugural installation weekend. Mark confirms that he was a newbie but the group wasn’t. David Nispel has also posted several pictures in the BBYO Facebook Group – members of which can see the chat and pictures by clicking here. One quite extraordinary feat of memory comes from Jay Marks, recalling the score as a 1-1 draw and describing the football match as, “an undignified kick about in 70s terrace attire…” and that…”wherever the party was in north Manchester later it would have been far more successful.”
If any of my old mates from Alleyn’s School are still reading this and had been wondering why I often looked so wrecked on a Monday morning during my last year at school – this piece explains a fair bit.
Anyway, Mark, I have done my worst (as lawyers tend to say) and now rest my case. Over to you.
Jay Marks posted in the BBAK Facebook Group in January 2019, inferring that the 1980s look might have been a little more aesthetically pleasing than the 1970s look. That remark kicked off some lively debate.
As it happens, Jay became BBYO National President on 1 January 1980, so methinks Jay might have been alluding to this fact and trying to take some credit for a change…
…in his opinion improvement…
…in style or looks between 31 December 1979 and 1 January 1980.
As it also happens, I am one of just a handful of people who had the honour to serve on the National Executive in both 1979 and 1980. Unfortunately, though, I was encouraged to put down my camera once I’d been co-opted onto the Committee in the summer of 1979, so I have been forced to trawl public domain archives for photographic evidence of that seminal change in aesthetics.
Of course, public domain sources are notoriously unreliable, whereas my memory is merely notorious.
Here are my “best efforts” to capture the look and spirit of the cusp of those decades.
I believe this might be the 1979 BBYO National Executive doing outreach work in one of the remotest parts of the District 15 empire. Hull perhaps? Is that Jeffrey at the back of the wagon wearing shades? It is hard to tell. The local member (bearded) looks ever so grateful for the visit.I believe this might be the 1980 BBYO National Executive in relaxed mode, taking full advantage of the female attention, attributable no doubt to the much improved sartorial look, no? Is that Raymond partially obscured at the back? And once again Jeffrey, perhaps, playfully biting a colleagues shoulder. It’s so hard to tell.
The original Wikimedia Commons sources for these photos seem to think they are something else. In the interests of good manners and good practice, they are embedded below so other researchers might form their own opinion on these sources.
…for further information and/or photos was answered in most impressive style by Jay Marks…or should I say Jay’s mum.
Please thank your mum for me, Jay. (How many times must I have said that during 1980?)
As Jay says to me in his covering note:
… my mum has outdone you…
…and who could disagree with that?
Point is, Jay’s mum had saved a magazine article from the Jewish Chronicle nearly 40 years ago (as I write in January 2020). The piece, by Barry Toberman, is a veritable treasure trove of pictures (some colour, nach) and information about BBYO at that time.
Jay remarks elsewhere about these articles:
Reading it made us sound like a trade union / political party
But some fabulous shots of very special people…
There’s no date on the pages, but I’m guessing it will have been published in the spring of 1980, after Rebecca Lowi’s resignation but before she left just ahead of that summer. More on that subject anon.
Meanwhile Jay cheekily also photographed a couple of the ads from that magazine, just to remind us all (in case we need reminding) that it was all a long time ago.
As Jay says:
But best of all in this mag were the ads… Aramis literally communicates success – assuming success is on the lounge floor in a sleeping bag 200 miles from home
…and then, Jay again commenting:
Tech ain’t what it used to be
This Hitachi ad makes a good point, Jay. Where’s your video footage from convention 1979/1980, eh? Now that can be your next challenge.
Seriously, many thanks again to Jay and Jay’s mum for providing this wonderful archive material.
I have very few specific memories of the 1979/1980 BBYO National convention.
One reason for my dearth of memories from that particular convention is a complete absence of photographs. I have hundreds of photographs from the previous year’s convention – click here or below for the Ogblog article and links…
…but I have not a single photograph from the 1979/1980 convention. If anyone reading this piece has photos…even one photo…from that convention, it would be great to see it and/or add it to this Ogblog piece.
Of course, I do have my diaries, but – as was my habit with large scale BBYO events such as conventions – I considered them, at the time, to be such memorable events that I needn’t write down any details about them.
Below is the sum total of my scribbling for the three days 30 December 1979 to 1 January 1980:
…got up very early in morn, set off for convention. Great time at convention, saw in new year… …GREAT DAY. GOT ELECTED AS NATIONAL RESOURCE.
Yet, despite the lack of memories and writing, the 1979/1980 Convention was a momentous event for me. I was elected onto the National Executive for 1980 (I had been co-opted onto the National Exec to edit the magazine for the second half of 1979, but that’s not the same thing as getting elected).
So let me try to delve the memory bank. The National Executive for 1980 had been scaled right back – the feeling being that most day-to-day responsibility should be devolved to the regions and thus a smaller National Executive could be a more strategic or policy-oriented body.
1980, I think, proved this scaled-down executive idea to be flawed for BBYO in Great Britain and Ireland, but the upshot for the 1979/1980 convention was that there were only three posts up for election that year, rather than the usual 6 to 8 posts.
Jay Marks was elected National President.
Jay Marks, Spring 1979. If you could look that cool, you could be National President.
Ivor Heller, my fellow Streathamista, was elected National Vice-President:
Ivor Heller, Spring 1979, enjoying a goodness-knows-what moment with Helen Lewis from OxfordIncontrovertible evidence that the mystery woman above is Helen Lewis, plus a rare picture of Rebecca Lowi, the BBYO full-timer, chatting with Ivor, Spring 1979
The third and final election that year was for National Resources Officer, which was a combination of several former portfolios such as welfare, programmes, Soviet Jewry and perhaps a couple of others. I remember so little about how the elections worked. I think a candidate had to be proposed and seconded by an elector. Each group that was fully constituted (i.e. had a charter) had two electors. I think candidates simply made a short speech of self-advocacy and the electors then voted.
I don’t recall preparing myself for an election battle in any meaningful way. I think the influencers from the outgoing committee had decided that I had done enough in four or five months of magazine editing to justify supporting me for this expanded and complex portfolio. Anyway, I somehow succeeded in convincing enough electors that a bit of magazine writing and editing qualified me for the task…
…which would be a bit like assuming that a political sketch writer and former editor of a political magazine should be elected to a great political office of state…oh cripes!
We joined those already on the National Executive who would remain; Paul Dewinter (Southern Region President), Raymond Ingleby (Northern Region President) and Jeffrey Spector, who was to stay on as immediate past National President after saying goodbye to formal office.
Of course, conventions are also about goodbyes as well as hellos. This convention marked the end of Jeffrey Spector’s Presidency and indeed the end of two very successful years on the National Executive in his case.
Jeff Spector, Spring 1979
Writing forty years after this convention (in January 2020) and nearly five years after Jeffrey’s premature death, his memory lives on powerfully in my mind and I’m sure in the minds of most who knew him.
Jeffrey will have been honoured with life membership of BBYO at this convention, as would several other stalwarts. I don’t remember all the names, but I’m pretty sure Richard Marks, Tania Silverman and Neil Hyman were amongst them.
Of course there will have been interesting events for us all to enjoy. There will have been singing, dancing, skit competitions and a heck of a lot of spirited stuff. We had the spirit all right.
But in truth, I do not remember any specific stuff of that kind from this convention. I’d love to hear from people who have some very specific memories from this one.
But I do have one very clear memory from the aftermath of convention. It is described in my diary a bit but I do also remember it clearly.
Wednesday 2 January – Really late night. GREAT DAY. Returned, went straight back out to Hillel top stay with…
Thursday 3 January – …Dubliners. Saw off in the morning. Got a lot of admin done.
Yes, something went awry with the travel plans for the Dublin contingent on 2 January – presumably they missed their train or were informed that they would not get to Holyhead in time for the last ferry or something.
Anyone who ever went to one of these conventions will know how tired I must have been when I got home, but I had barely put down my bags when I got the call to please come to Hillel House and stay the night. The authorities there were refusing to give the Dublin BBYO contingent (I think it was 10 to 15 people) sanctuary unless someone suitably senior stayed with them to ensure that there would be no trouble.
So I grabbed my sleeping bag and headed off to Euston for the night, where I joined some very grateful Dubliners in a large room that I think was normally used for functions…
I’m amused also to read my comment about “getting a lot of admin done” while at Hillel on 3 January. However tired I must have been after seeing off the Dubliners, I was clearly awake and motivated enough to get started on my new portfolio that very day. The 57-year-old me is awarding the 17-year-old me top marks for effort there.
The Dubliners, being a warm and generous lot, sent me a lovely thank you and gift voucher when they returned to Dublin. I think David Lapedus was the ringleader of that kind gesture.
With the voucher, I treated myself to a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which has been my writing companion for the 40 years since…
“A thesaurus is great. There’s no other word for it” – Ross Smith
The sight of my Roget’s Thesaurus would often make me think of that convention and in particular that additional night with the Dubliners at Hillel House.
A BBYO convention is great. There’s no other word for it.
Postscript: Jay Marks responded to my shout out for more memories and/or materials in tremendous style – thanks in the most part to his mum. I have annexed – link here and below – a wonderful magazine piece from the Jewish Chronicle at the time, preserved by Jay’s mum and sent through via Facebook by Jay;
