Maya Angelou, American writer and civil rights activist, famously wrote:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The details of this strange story from 40 years ago are lost in the mists of time and the sad fact is that I am now the sole survivor of that late evening, as Neil White (Lindsay Hall resident tutor) and Toby Bourgein (former Students’ Union Secretary and Postgraduate grandee by that time), have both since died.
I eulogised Toby in the following piece when I learned, in September 2020, that he had died:
I wrote about Neil White and Toby when I wrote up, forty years on, a memorable snowed-in evening or two from December 1981:
Ah, the Neil White home brew. I suspect that was also involved in the October 1984 kidnapping incident.
Here is all that I recorded in my personal diary for 15 October 1984:
Monday, 15 October 1984 – Very busy today – went to McDonald’s for tea and on to Marston tasting in KRA and on to Chalky’s [Neil White’s] flat.
That is not very revealing, but I remember that night 15/16 October, impressionistically, very well.
The context of all this is the Tommy and Ralph saga, which had come to a head that August when we dismissed the Students’ Union bar managers, Tommy & Ralph…
…and which was about to come to a head again, as their appeal to a Students’ Union EGM was to take place 10 days later, 25 October.
Ironically, our purpose at the KRA (postgraduate bar) on the evening of 15 October was to finalise the choice of main real ale for the new Real Ale Bar, formerly – and in location terms still – the Ballroom Bar. After searching high and low for an alternative to the KRA’s choice of Marston’s Pedigree, we bowed to the inevitable and chose to offer that brew also in the Students’ Union. The fruits of our research did mean that we also offered Banks’s Mild as a regular beer in that bar, which I found particularly pleasant as a brew for the remainder of my sabbatical year.
Neil and Toby invited me back to Neil’s resident tutor’s place for a chat and some home brew. This did not seem an odd invitation, as I had spent the occasional long evening that way with them over the years, see Snow White article and other such evenings.
But it soon became clear that Neil and Toby had a serious purpose to their invitation. I knew that they were friends with Tommy and Ralph. I also knew that they did not approve of the actions we had taken. But they made it very clear to me, as we downed some of Neil’s home brew, that they were going to support Tommy and Ralph’s motion of appeal to the EGM and that it was their view that the appeal would succeed and that the dismissals would be overturned. They certainly had precedent on their side to support their confidence that the appeal would succeed. No such appeal against a dismissal had ever previously been denied by the student body.
I explained to Neil and Toby the deep thought and heart-wrenching that had gone into our decision, but also that I/we were resolute that we had done the right thing in law and for the good of the Students’ Union. They disagreed and tried to persuade me to recant and change sides ahead of the appeal. In their minds, THAT would be for the good of the Union and also for my own good, as they saw my position and Education & Welfare Officer, having chaired the August dismissal meeting, as untenable once the appeal had been upheld and the decision to dismiss forcibly overturned.
I responded that such a change of position would make it even more untenable for me to continue in my role. I also felt (and still do) that such a U-turn would have been ruinous for the Students’ Union. We had, after all, made the decision because the status quo with those bar managers was unsustainable; the Union would have been financially ruined by or even before the end of that academic year.
Once we reached the point that, to my mind, we had established that our views were diametrically opposed and that there was no “third way” that might reconcile our positions, I got up to leave.
My memory is not entirely clear about how they prevented me from leaving, but I do recall at least one of them, if not both of them, blocking the door and at least one of them, if not both of them, saying:
we’re not going to let you leave until you change your mind.
It is that aspect of the evening that has, for all these years, made me associate the word “kidnap” with this event.
I’d like to make a few impressionistic things clear. At no point was there a threat or even the vaguest suggestion of serious violence, other than the aggression that might be supposed when people block a door to prevent someone from leaving. I recall that it was sort-of well-humoured, despite being sinister.
I recall giggling at one point and telling Toby, as he would well know, that they were technically falsely imprisoning me. Neil and Toby asserted that this was for my own good, that they liked me, and that they wanted me to put my own position (and that of Tommy and Ralph) right, and that they couldn’t possibly let me go until they had persuaded me to follow their guidance.
This odd event went on until really quite late. My appointment diary for those two days provides a clue as to how I escaped.
Nothing as exciting as a Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped adventure. I squeezed in a meeting with Toby Bourgein the next day. My escape was achieved through the expedient of promising to think very carefully about what Neil and Toby had said and to meet Toby the next day to continue the conversation.
The meeting on 16th at 1.00 was not very long and not very pleasant. I told Toby that reflection had only firmed up my view that the decision we had made about Tommy and Ralph was the right one and that recanting would neither be right nor in the interests of the Union.
The words in my personal diary of 16 October are quite revealing.
Tuesday, 16 October 1984 – Feeling rather ill today – meetings galore – all unpleasant – John Boy [John White – no relation] came back in eve to do policy document.
I found the whole Tommy and Ralph matter painful and emotionally draining. Finding myself up against old friends who were so sure of their position that they were prepared to kidnap me in an attempt to persuade me only added to the pain.
I’m not sure whether I even told my colleagues what had happened that night, John might remember if I did tell them, as might Kate (Susan) Fricker and/or Pady Jalali.
I still have fond memories of Neil and Toby from the many happy occasions I spent with them. I also firmly believe that they had the interests of the Students’ Union and their friends Tommy & Ralph genuinely at heart. But I believe that they were wrong-headed over this matter. I also believe that their conduct in the way they went about trying to persuade me to recant – was inappropriate and out of character for those two.
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